"Tony Daniel - Robot's Twilight Companion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniel Tony)

When the Lakebridge Edifice was complete, it was clear that Nell was a major artist of her generation.
Even Henry, who had been an intimate part of the design and construction of the structure, was stunned
when he first saw it complete and revealed, one morning near sunrise.
HeтАЩd been out on his terrace, weeding the tomatoes. Even with a plethora of soil emulsifiers, regulatory
agents, and hunter-killer insect robots, weeds still grew. The problem was one of recognition, for life was
life, no matter how irritating the form it took. Henry had not been able to sleep the night before, while
Nell had slept like a log, her labors in Seattle nearly completed. Their settled life was about to end, Henry
knew, and with it the feeling of content and regularity that he hadnтАЩt known since his days growing up on
his parentsтАЩ little farm near Dalton, Georgia.

HeтАЩd gone out onto the terrace because that was the place that smelled and felt most strongly of the old
farm, particularly his fatherтАЩs prized tomato garden. It should. HeтАЩd worked to get just that flavor out of
the thirty feet, even sacrificing yield to do it. This was the way it had been. And, once again, he was going
to leave it and lose it.

Henry began to weed despondently, while dawn turned the black sky gray, as it did nearly every morning
in Seattle. Except. Except that now there was something new that made the gray skyтАФnot brighterтАФbut
lighter . The sun came up, and shone on the northeast corner of the Lakebridge Edifice.

The problem wasnтАЩt new, Nell had told him. It was the age-old renovation problem of what to do with
low ceilings. In Seattle, the clouds were often low, and the sky was frequently mean. It sometimes made
you feel compressed, made your life seem squat and set. Yet there was the water of lake and ocean
nearby, and when the clouds would permit, mountains on all sides.

Lakebridge was a solution to those days when the mountains didnтАЩt come out, and the Sound and lakes
were dishwater dull. It did not attempt to reverse those conditions, but to provide a new experience. It
was a complex of different spaces, Nell called them. They couldnтАЩt properly be viewed as distinct
buildings. Too many connections, suggested and literal. The complex partially encompassed Lake Union,
on the northeast side of downtown, and seemed to be the very evaporation and condensation of lake
water into the skyтАФthe cycle of liquid, vapor, and the solid apparitions of clouds in an ascending order
that spired out at three-quarter miles. And yet this was far from all that the complex suggested. There
was a colorful marina, a hoverport, residential and business sections intertwining like striated muscles.
The structure was organic, alive, useful, because it was art first, because the craft was part of the makeup
of its living form.

Henry found himself drawing in his breath at the beauty of what his wife had conceived. Then a small
hand wiped the sweat from his brow, and Nell wound her arm around him and crooked herself under his
shoulder.

тАЬDo you think itтАЩs pretty?тАЭ she asked shyly. Henry knew that this was no put-on. Nell was, herself,
constantly surprised by what her gift allowed her to do.

тАЬYou done yourself proud,тАЭ Henry whispered, and Nell hugged him tighter.

тАЬIтАЩm glad you like it,тАЭ she said. тАЬThat means more to me than anything.тАЭ Henry looked down into her
hazel eyes and felt pure love. Like the love he felt for the Earth, for the way things grew and changed.
Her eyes were the color of good fertile soil. They were the color of fine wood and thick prairie sage. He
kissed her lightly on the forehead, and she drew him down to her lips. Good. Right. Beautiful.