"Isaac Asimov - Nebula Stori" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

Nightingale ignored him. But that night he
was lonelier than usual and even the icy
Dreamers were better than no company at
all.

Made from synthetic diamond, the Dome
resembled a truncated soccer ball. Jato
had looked up its history in the city
library and found a treatise on how the
DomeТs shape mimicked the molecule
buckyball. Its holographic lighting evoked
the quantum eigenfunctions that described
a buckyball. He didnТt understand the
physics, but he appreciated the beauty it
produced.

Tonight Dreamers were everywhere, dancing,
talking, humming. Centuries of playing
with their genes and living in perpetual
night had bleached their skin almost to
translucence. Their hair floated around
their bodies like silver smoke. Light from
lamps outside the Dome refracted through
the diamond walls, gracing the interior
with rainbows that collected on the
Dreamers in pools of color. They glistened
like quantum ghosts.

Across the Dome, the doors opened. A
spacer stood in the doorway, her body
haloed by the rainbow luminance. This was
no Dreamer. She looked solid. Sun-touched.
She must have come in on one of the rare
ships that visited Nightingale; rare,
because the Dreamers allowed no
immigration and most sun-dwellers found a
city of unrelieved night depressing
anyway. The only reason people usually
came to Ansatz was to trade for a Dream.

Ah, yes. The Trade.

Dreamers make a simple offer; give one a
pleasant dream and in return the Dreamer
will give you a work of art. They allow
you ten days to try. After that, you must
leave Nightingale, trade or no trade.
Considering the prices Dreamer art claims
throughout the Imperialate, that trade
seems astoundingly one-sided, the offer of