（外文电子版资料）Charles Stross - Tarkovskys Cut.pdf

Tarkovskys Cut by Charles Stross Once a lifetime Jewel swims in the Folded Rose lagoon. She strikes out through the mirror-still water until she can just make out the Hub wall, and then she swims a little further. She lies back in the water and lets things pass her by for a while. On a clear day she can just make out, directly above, the fields and forests she explored as a cild. She smiles, and maps the vague topology, sharpening it with memories. Then, for the first time in many years, she turns off her Wisdom, and thinks back, unaided, to what it was like. The feel of landpussy fur. The strong savour of barbecued cockroach. The first exquisite tickle of the Wisdom uplink behind her eyes. She swims in memories and falls like a stone, into childhood, and into the black depths of the lake. Now Jewel is an old woman again, nearing the end of her fortieth lifetime, and she is ready to swim again. She stands on the foredeck of the houseboat, fingering the jewel, which hangs on a silver chain about her neck. The craft turns in the water, and Jewel watches as the Hub -- a craggy, rust-stained rock wall -- swings into view. She looks up, and up and up. The rocks climb all the way to the forests of her childhood -- there, on the opposite side of the oneil. The Hubs fault lines and discolorations are not, like the lagoon, a builders whim. They are real. The Heaven Eleven oneil is ten thousand years old. The houseboat is anchored to a smaller, grey and scree-swept slope, which curves so that its lips meet the hub at either edge, forming a pouch some five hundred feet above the lagoon. In it lie the remains of an ancient city and there, built over their ruined heart, stands the