"Tony Daniel - The Valley of the Gardens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniel Tony)

herding and harvesting whatever usable excretions the desert produced. The Fallers
had been on Cangarriga since time immemo-rial, since the war itself, and were as
much a part of the desert as Mac was a part of the valley.

If the valley was beauty and order, the desert was its opposite: wild almost
beyond comprehension. It had taken root in the nomads as well. None was alike in
appearance or even inner makeup. Some had grown carapaces, had beetled over
with chitinous coats sporting insectlike wings that served as solar collectors and
message transceivers. Others had grown odd append-ages that served arcane
purposes, or no purpose at all: roots, antlers. The girl appeared normal but for her
forehead, which was nubbined with the buds of two tiny horns.

The weird was commonplace in the desert. What the nomads made their living
from, such that it was, was finding the utterly unusual and unique. Over tens of
thousands of years, even random computing was bound to churn out a few odd
results that might be sold or traded for food and the various gewgaws the nomads
lusted after.

Mac reflected that he ought to know; heтАЩd done his share of trading over the
years. He usually let his nonsentients analyze the goods, and himself only had a
general awareness of what he bought from the nomads. Customarily, these were
things such as solutions to mathematical conundrums, oddball, incredibly compact
methods for file archiving, or remixes of movies, novels, or music that might strike
someoneтАЩs fancy on some other world, but had never struck his. In exchange, he
sold the nomads the motorcycles they adored, tents, drills, old analyzer parts,
obsolete robots, and cracked-code nonsentient algorithms. Across the desert was
strewn the detritus of human-ity, the leavings of the religious pilgrimages that had
occurred for several centuries after the war ended. Some of the junk was
transformed in an odd or beautiful manner, brought back to a twilight life or function
by interac-tion with the jack-rock and other castaway items. Most desert artifacts
were worthless, howeverтАФas useless and stupid as the washing machine fall of
regenerating stones the nomads had once tried to sell him.

Much better to live in the Valley of the Gardens, where the land was loved,
tended, and bountiful.
 HeтАЩd tried to tell Theresa that in one of their conversations.

тАЬUntil you set foot over the line and enter the valley, youтАЩll never know what a
shithole you live in,тАЭ heтАЩd said. тАЬGive it a try, one try, and youтАЩre never going back.тАЭ

Of course, he had no real idea what he was talking about. HeтАЩd never been
more than a footstep into the Extremadura.

Mac had been teasing Theresa the day he challenged her to cross over, but the
next time they metтАФshe tried it. Without a word of warning, she hopped through a
tumbled section of fence and stood on his property.

And hopped right backтАФas if touched by flame.

HeтАЩd checked the log that evening and saw that his encroachment proto-cols