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

comforting to think about bricks.
Think about bricks.
Bricks are hard because the constituent molecules are bound. They all hold
together and gravity is defied. Randomness, too, is held off. Chaos is stopped so
long as the molecules don't leave their assigned places.
And they can't do that. The vibrational energy they'd need would be too high. No
way over that barrier, except if they all decided to tunnel. And brick molecules can't
all decide to tunnel at once, can they? Without someone to tell them to?
My fingers claw harder into the gritty mortar and a layer of skin scrapes away
painfully. Don't tunnel, I cry silently to the molecules. Don't. Stay here and be
content as a brick. A simple honorable brick among bricks, which holds up roofs
and keeps the cold wind off people...
I plead desperately... and somehow I sense agreement. At least the wall doesn't
seem to be going anywhere. In a momentary shiver, the fit is over. I'm left standing
here feeling drained and a bit silly, with a dusty brow and filthy hands. I let the latter
drop and turn to rest my back against the wall with a sigh.
It is a damp evening. Faint tendrils of fog creep across the twenty yards of
parking lot between me and the far fence. The fog curls past like the fingers of an old
blind woman--touching lightly the corner wall, the parked cars, the overflowing
garbage cans--and moving on.
I start to cringe as a vaporous flagellum drifts along the wall to brush me. Don't.
It's only fog. That's all. Just fog.
I used to like fog. It always smelled good. Lots of negative ions, I suppose. Still,
here next to the garbage cans the stench must be pretty bad. I wish I could tell.
Laughter feels dry and artificial, yet I laugh. Here I am, suffering something akin to
a psychotic break, and I'm worried about my damned sense of smell!


Parmin spoke so slowly toward the end, but cheerfully in spite of the pain.
"... The machines I have shown you how to build will do their part. My former
masters, those who hold your world in secret quarantine, will be taken by surprise.
They believe you will be incapable of any such constructs for hundreds of your
years. You are all to be congratulated for making them so quietly and so well.
"Using these machines will be another matter entirely, however. These devices
must be talked to. They must be coaxed. Their operators must deal with them on a
plane that is at the meeting of physics and metaphysics--at the juncture of
mathematics and meditation.
"That is why I selected men such as you, Brad. You fly jet aircraft, to be sure.
But more importantly, you fly the same way you play the piano. All of our pilots
must learn to play their ships, for persuading them to tunnel between the stars will
require the same empathy as the pianist, who coaxes hammer strokes on metal
wires to tunnel glory into a human brain."


My driver's license says I am Charles L. Magun. For well over a year I've repaired
motorcycles for a living, and brought in a few extra bucks on the side keeping kids
from wrecking themselves too badly in places like the Yankee. I have a live-in
girlfriend who's been to college, I guess, but is no threat. She's quiet and nice to
have around. I have some redneck pals who I bike and lift weights with and everyone
calls me Chuck.