"David Brin - Senses Three and Six" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

Yeah. So what? I want to shout. Who cares if they catch me? All they can do is
kill me!
Why, in god's name, have I been making myself so miserable?
Wow.
All right, then. Chuck is a little bit overdone. Hiding as a macho motorcycle
repairman is smart, sure. But Chuck doesn't have to belch in disgust every time a
snatch of classical music comes on over the radio. He doesn't have to watch
motorcross on the TV or make snide remarks every time Elise makes a pathetic little
attempt at philosophizing.
Amazing I didn't think of this before. All I have left to lose is my worthless life.
Small potatoes. Maybe I really can ease up a bit. Why didn't I think of this before?
The clouds part and suddenly there is the moon. It is beautiful, like an opal in the
night. I can play subjective tricks with it, make it small, a pearl held up at arm's
length, or go zooming in with my imagination, filling the sky with craters and tnaria
much as... much as it might look from the portal of a ship.
I can see the Lunar Appenines, trace one of the ridges all the way to a little valley
that twists and turns and dives into rocky depth. I can follow that cleft to the lip of a
cave, a cave where there's buried...
Where there's buried...
No!
I refuse! Uh-uh! No fair.
I've done enough this evening, now leave me alone! I've agreed to be more
reasonable, to let myself relax a bit and enjoy what's left of my life. But you can't
make me remember, Brad. I won't do it!
Chuck hunches his shoulders and shoves his hands into his pockets. He shakes
his head vigorously and walks toward the sound of drums and guitars, toward the
door to the Yankee Dollar.
 Imagine a blockade... a quarantine.
The stars are as numerous as specks of pollen blowing across a prairie. Life
blossoms everywhere, and yet the glimmer of intelligence is rare.
Imagine an ancient civilization that cherishes the openness, the emptiness. They
are reflective and refined--and selfish. They do not want space filled with
clamorous young neighbors.
Imagine that one day a new species emerges, bright, curious, vigorous. The Old
Ones set up a blockade as they have done in the past. With a severe kindness the
fact of the quarantine is kept secret from the newcomers. A merciful discretion.
But now, imagine a traitor, an Old One who disagrees with Policy... And
imagine a few precocious natives...


The set is over. A slow song plays over the FM and Elise waits at our table,
moving her lips to the words of the song. I watch her as I walk along the dim bar
and motion for Joey to give me a fresh beer.
Every so often, when I let her, Elise sings to me. Softly, holding my head on her
lap and running her hands through my thinning hair, she croons her gentle country
melodies and helps me sleep.
Right now her eyes are focused out beyond the bandstand somewhere. I suppose
she's just staring out into space, but there's something in her expression... She does
that sometimes. When she's puttering with her plants and I'm trying to adjust a
jammed sprocket, suddenly she'll stop and look intently at nothing. At times like that