"01 - Midnight at the Well of Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

galaxy these remains get more and more numerous.
And, as yet, we haven't a clue as to who they were."

"Are there no artifacts of any sort?" came a disbe-
lieving female voice.

'?

"None, as you should know. Citizen Jainet," came
the formal reply in a mildly reproving tone. "That is
what is so infuriating about it all. The cities, yes, about
which some things can be inferred about their builders,
but no furniture, no pictures, nothing of an even re-
motely utilitarian nature. The rooms, as you will see,
are quite barren. Also, no cemeteries; indeed, nothing
mechanical at all, either."

"That's because of the computer, isn't it?" came an-
other, deeper female voice, that of the stocky girl
from the heavy-gravity world whose family name was
Marino.

"Yes," Skander agreed. "But, come, let's move in-
to the city. We can talk as we go."

They started forward, soon coming into a broad
boulevard, perhaps fifty meters across. Along each
side ran what appeared to be broad -walkways, each
six to eight meters across, like the moving walkways of
spaceports that took you to and from loading gates. But
no conveyor belt or such was evident; the walkways
were made of the same greenish-brown stone, or
metal, or whatever it was that composed the rest of
the city.

"The crust of this planet," Skander continued, "is
about averageЧforty to forty-five kilometers thick.
Measurements on this and other worlds of the Marko-
vians showed a consistent discontinuity, about one
kilometer thick, between the crust and the natural man-
tierock beneath. This, we have discovered, was an ar-
tificial layer of material that is essentially plastic but
seems to have had a sort of life in itЧthis much, at
least, we infer. Consider how much information your
own cells contain. You are the products of the best
genetic manipulation techniques, perfect physical and
mental specimens of the best of your races adapted
to your native planets. And yet, for all that, you are
far more than the sum of your parts. Your cells, par-
ticularly your brain cells, store input at an astonishing