（外文电子版资料）Charles Stross - Router.pdf

Router by Charles Stross The air in the bar is filled with a billowing relativistic smoke cloud–it’s a stellarium, accurately depicting the view beyond the imaginary walls. Aberration of starlight skews the color toward violet around the doorway, brightening in a rainbow mist over the tables, then dimming to a hazy red glow in front of the raised platform at the back. The Doppler effect has slowly emerged over the past few months as the ship gathers momentum. In the absence of visible stellar motion–or a hard link to the ship’s control module–it’s the easiest way for a drunken passenger to get a feeling for how fast the Field Circus is moving. Which is frighteningly fast: some time ago, the ship’s momentum exceeded half its rest mass, at which point a single kilogram packs the punch of a multi-megaton hydrogen bomb. A ginger-and-brown cat sprawls indolently across the wooden floorboards in front of the bar, directly beneath the bridge of the starbow, as if it has captured the only ray of sunlight to be had within the starship. In the shadows at the back of the bar, two men slump at a table, lost in their respective morose thoughts: one nurses a bottle of Czech beer, the other a half-empty cocktail glass. It wouldn’t be so bad if she is giving me some sign, says one of them, tilting his beer bottle to inspect the bottom for sediment. No: that not right. It’s the correct kind of attention. Am not knowing where I stand with her. The other one leans back in his chair, squints at the faded brown paint of the ceiling. Take it from one who knows, he says, if you knew, you’d have nothing to dream about. Anyway, what she wants and what you want may not be the same thing. The first man runs a hand through his hair: tight-curled black ringlets briefly turn silver beneath his aging touch. Pierre, if talent for making patronizing statements is what you get from to tup Amber– Pierre glares at him with all the venom an augmented nineteen-year-old can muste