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

I worry that she might actually be thinking.
Then she snaps out of it and makes some reassuringly benign remark about a
stupid woman who wanted to buy azaleas out of season.
She is nervous, though she's calmed down considerably lately. I don't know
where the nervousness comes from and I've avoided thinking about it. There was a
time when I could have tried... but Chuck doesn't know anything about psychology.
He thinks it's bullshit.
Hell, I give her strength and stability and loving and a good deal more. It's a fair
trade.
Gray eyes, her eyes, laughing at me over her bright silver flute, making me grin
and stumble over the chords--my fingers made schoolboy clumsy by the lightness
of my heart...
Gray eyes--cool ivory keys and a silvery flute...
Duet...


As I approach the table she looks up and smiles shyly. "Did you have a nice
walk?"
"Yeah, it was fine."
There are questions in her brown eyes. No denying I did act unusual, earlier. But
now I realize that I don't have to explain anything. Give it a rest and in a few days or
weeks I'll start giving in a little to her curiosity. Chuck will explain a little. Minor stuff.
No hurry.
Why not?
We talk about little things and spend a lot of time not talking at all. I check IDs
and make sure nobody's molesting anyone in the men's room.
The Boys are back on stage playing quiet songs, as I return from one of my
rounds and find Elise talking to Alan Fowler at our table.
Damn.
Alan's a nice, friendly grad student who's much too bright for his own good. He
met Chuck at a dirt-bike race and sort of adopted him and Elise. Chuck insults him
all the time, calling him a useless egghead, but he never seems to get the hint.
I come up behind Elise. She is very animated.
"... not sure I understand what they hope to accomplish, Alan. You mean you
could actually mine asteroids efficiently enough to make a profit selling refined
metals back to Earth?"
"That's what the figures show, Lise." Alan winks at me but Elise doesn't notice.
"You mean even after transportation costs are taken into account? Can you
amortize costs over a reasonable period?"
Chuck frowns. What is this? He doesn't like hearing words like these from Elise.
Who does she think she's fooling?
Alan grins. "Easily, Lise. Less than a decade, I'd guess. Of course, in the
beginning it'll be water for propellants well be after. But later? Well, imagine twenty
years' worldwide platinum production coming from just one small asteroid! Why, we
could easily go back to the days of the sixties and seventies when there was so much
of a surplus that liberal ideas could flower..."
I can't help snorting in disgust. Chuck votes redneck.


The secret Ark Project was responsible for over half of the mysterious inflation