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

They made love in the terrace garden, as Henry had always wanted to. If there was any artistry in sex,
they caught it that day, twisting amid the tomato plants. Sex was supposedly the pattern and rhythm that
the sonnet followed, but Henry was convinced theirs was itself the symbol of a sonnet, the gift that art
was giving back to the world for giving it someone like Nell Branigan.

Henry made love to her with abandon. Her responding movements dug her deeper into the dirt of the
terrace until she was partially buried, and Henry was lowering himself deeper than soil level with each
thrust. Her hands smeared his back and sides with loam, and their kisses began to get muddy.

Before he came, Nell turned him over into the depression they had carved and, sitting on him, wiped
herself clean with tomato vines. He pushed up into her. She caressed his face with hands smelling of
vegetable tang, and rubbed her clit with the pith and juice of his crushed plants. Henry felt himself on the
verge but held back, held back. He tried to reach up into Nell with feeling, with an understanding and
admiration for herтАФthe woman in her, the artist, the subtle combination of the two that was her soul.

And he must have touched it, set it to pulsing, for she came all over him, more than ever before,
dampening his stomach and thighs with a thin sheen of herself. His climax was just as hard and complete,
and they collapsed in the garden. Henry spoke on some nearby heating elements, and fell fast asleep, his
love in his arms.
***

Two weeks later, Henry was offered a visiting professorship at Stanford that would not involve teaching,
but only a bit of consulting work with graduate students in writing. It was a dream slot, lucrative and
freeing. Henry suspected the offer was partly due to the reflected glamour of his association with Nell, for
Nell and the Lakebridge Edifice had made the opening screen of the general newsourceVirtual with the
heading Architectural Renaissance Woman. Nell was, of course, receiving project proposals from right
and left.
тАЬIt appears I can live practically anywhere and do my work,тАЭ she said. When Henry told her about the
Stanford opportunity, she encouraged him to accept. They prepared to move to San Francisco in the
autumn.

From: Living on the Moon
An Essay Concerning Lunar Architectural Possibilities
by Nell Branigan

I conceive of structures that create a human space within themselves, and yet are not closed off
from the grandeur of the settingтАФthe wonder of where the people are and what they are doing.
This is the moon, and we have come to this new world to live! We must take into account
Earth-rise and moon mountain vistas. I imagine an architecture that moves and accommodates
itself to take advantage of the best synergies and juxtapositions of the landscape.
And yet the forms that we conceive to give us the spaces that will move us must, themselves, be
beautiful.

What follows is merely my idea of such an architecture. It is intended as an acorn, and not as the
oak-tree entire. Space is broad and empty, and where there are humans, there will be places
humans live. And where there are places to live, there will be architects.

Henry was writing a poem about briar patches when Nell came in to tell him about the moon. He knew it
must be important, otherwise she would never have interrupted him at his work. In those days, his hair
was closely cropped, and Nell had enjoyed running her fingers through its crispness. She did so this time,