Galaxy North (storybook)

• Great Wall ( eng. Great Wall of Mars )
• Ice Age ( eng. Glacial )
• Spy on Europe ( English A Spy in Europa )
• Weather ( eng. Weather )
• English Dilation sleep
• English Grafenwalder's Bestiary
• Nightingale
• Galactic North

The scene for the story is the satellite Europe , owned by the Demarchists. As a result of a decrease in solar activity, the Earth’s population lost a leading role in the economy of the solar system. Political and economic power began to gain the satellite of Jupiter. Demarchists own Europe and Io , Gilgamesh Isis - Ganymede and Callisto . Both sides are fighting for supremacy. Marius Vargovik, the spy of Gilgamesh, arrives in Europe to meet with a woman named Chochk who said she knows something that could harm the cities of Europe. Vargovik resides in Cadmus-Asterius, a floating city. The top of the city is located on the surface of the ice, but the lower levels of the city, 8 kilometers, are immersed in the ocean . Vargovik meets Chokol, and she gives him a piece of "hyperelmaz" - an extremely strong allotropic form of carbon , a single molecule of which forms a sphere several hundred meters in diameter. These areas filled with vacuum are floats for cities. If Gilgamesh manages to find a way to destroy the spheres, it may enable large-scale sabotage.

Cholok, a specialist in the transformation of the human body , conducts Marius an operation that allows him to breathe under water. He asks her about the Adapted - experimental hybrids of people and local life forms created with the aim of obtaining the ideal submariner. Cholok denies their existence. Marius, in obedience to the instructions of his superiors, kills Chokol and leaves the city through an underwater sluice, heading for a place where he can be picked up. At the meeting place, he learns that the place is under the supervision of the counter-intelligence of the Demarchists. Marius heads off to the alternate meeting point, but notices that he is being pursued by city guards. Trying to hide in the hydrothermal springs , he meets the Adapted, who kill his pursuers. Adapted tell him that it was Chok that created them and secretly defended their interests before the government. Demarchists expelled the Adapted, while disabling the genes responsible for the production of "glycoproteins" that make their blood resistant to cold ocean water. Since then, they can only survive in sources that are warm enough. Cholok created a virus that could turn on the necessary genes back, but had only one opportunity to secretly transfer it to Adapted - the virus was secretly introduced into Marius' body during the operation. The transfer of a piece of hyper diamond was only a cover, and Chokol probably knew that the arriving agent would also be her killer. In order to use the virus, the Adapted Drink of Vargowick's blood, killing him.

The action takes place on the “Petrinal” spacecraft sub -illuminator, which was attacked by the Basilisk pirate sub-illuminator, when he retired quite far from the star system to return or request help. To save the cargo (people in a state of suspended animation ), the crew tried to flee, first dropping everything, could be considered overweight. But it did not help. The hero, on behalf of whom the narration is being conducted, even tried to change the settings of the Konjoiner engines - the holy of holies of the subluminal ship. They were saved by a fluke: during the boarding of the ship at a speed of a quarter of the speed of light, they were able to evaporate most of the Basilisk ablative ice shield using laser guns. Accidentally wandering space debris hit the unprotected ship and disabled it. The Petrinali team exterminated the remaining pirates and began researching the pirate ship, which, as it turned out, needs to be completed as soon as possible, since its Konjoiner engines are damaged and can turn the ship and its environment into a cloud of plasma from day to day. On the ship, they find a Kondoyner girl, a representative of a mysterious fraction of humanity who knows the secret of designing interstellar engines. She was obviously a prisoner of pirates, but for some reason she categorically refused to go to the Petrinal. She was taken away by force and set sail. Soon after this, the Basilisk exploded. The explosion somehow affected the Petrinali's own engines, which turned them into a dangerous mode of operation and did not allow them to reach the desired speed. The ship and crew found themselves in open space with virtually no opportunity to save themselves and the cargo: too far to call for help, too fast to be stopped by any star system even after many years. Inigo is trying to establish contact with the Konjojner girl, who more and more likes him. He called her Weather, because he could not find a term more similar to her name in her environment. At first, refusing to help him fix the engine and not wanting anything to do with ordinary "basic" people, she finally decides to help Inigo, explaining at the same time why she cannot reciprocate his feelings, and finally partially revealing one of the main secrets of Conjoyners - the way engine control: a pair of engines is controlled by Kojoiner, or rather the brain separated from the body, which is located in a special chamber, which prevents it from overheating due to the use of an unusually large, even for lichestva implants. Due to engine damage, the Kojorner-brain Petrinali could not cope with the load. To ensure the normal operation of the engines and the rescue of the ship, the Weather has to become part of the engine, another of its brains.

• "Weather by Alastair Reynolds"