"Brin, David - Uplift 02 - Startide Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

* Here you find me --
Wandering brother

* Even in this --
Human rhythm

* Where the humans
And other walkers

* Give mirth to ---
The stars themselves . . . *

A type of bliss settled over him as his heartbeat slowed. Creideiki slept next to the gentle dream-goddess. She chided him only teasingly for being an engineer, and for dreaming her in the rigid, focused verse of Trinary rather than the chaotic Primal of his ancestors.

She welcomed him to the Threshold Sea, where Trinary sufficed, where he felt only faintly the raging of the Whale Dream and the ancient gods who dwelt there. It was as much of that ocean as an engineer's mind could accept.

How rigid the Trinary verse sometimes seemed! The patterns of overlapping tones and symbols were almost humanprecise . . . almost human-narrow.

He had been brought up to think those terms compliments. Parts of his own brain had been gene-designed along human lines. But now and then chaotic sound-images slipped in, teasing him with a hint of ancient singing.

Nukapai clicked sympathetically. She smiled . . .

No! She did no such land-ape thing! Of cetaceans, only the neo-dolphin "smiled" with their mouths.

Nukapai did something else. She stroked against his side, gentlest of goddesses, and told him,

* Be now at peace *

* It is That is . . . *

* And engineers *

* Far from the ocean *

* Can hear it still *

The tension of several weeks at last broke, and he slept. Creideiki's breath gathered in glistening condensation on the ceiling bulkhead. The breeze from a nearby air duct brushed the droplets, which shuddered, then fell on the water like gentle rain.


When the image of Ignacio Metz formed a meter to his right, Creideiki was slow to become aware of it.

"Captain..." the image said. "I'm calling from the bridge. I am afraid the Galactics have found us here sooner than we expected. . ."

Creideiki ignored the little voice that tried to call him back to deeds and battles. He lingered in a waving forest of kelp fronds, listening to long night sounds. Finally, it was Nukapai herself who nudged him from his dream. Fading beside him, she gently reminded,

# Duty, duty-honor is, is-
Honor, Creideiki ---- alertly
# Shared, is-Honor #

Nukapai alone could speak Primal to Creideiki with impunity. He could no more ignore the dream-goddess than his own conscience. One eye at last focused on the hologram of the insistent human, and the words penetrated.