"Delany, Samuel R - The Einstein Intersection 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

Jean Harlow? Christ, Orpheus, Billy the Kid, those three I can understand. But what's a young spade writer like you doing all caught up with the Great White Bitch?!
Of course I guess it's pretty obvious.
Gregory Corso/In Conversation

It is not that love sometimes makes mistakes, but that it is, essentially, a mistake. We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfections on to another person. One day the phantasmagoria vanishes, and with it love dies.
Ortega y Gasset/On Love

Exhaustion numbed me; routine kaged me. It had stopped raining almost an hour before I realized it. And the land had changed.
We had left the rocks. Wet shrubs and briars fell before the dragons' claws. To our left, a strip of gray ground ran along with us, just down a small slope. Once I asked Stinky, "Are we following that funny strip of stone down there?"
He chuckled and sputtered, "Hey, Lobey, that's the first paved road I bet you ever seen. Right?"
"I guess so," I said. "What's paved?"
Knife, who was riding by, snickered. Stinky went off to do something else. That was the last I heard of it. Three or four carts trundled by on the road before it struck me what the damn thing was used for. Very clever. When the next one came by, I remembered to stare. It was late afternoon.

I was so tired all the world's wonders might have bounced on the balls of my eyes without leaving a picture.
Most of the carts were pulled by four or six legged animals that I was vaguely familiar with. But new animals are not strange sights when your own flock might lamb any monster. One cart made me start, though.
It was low, of black metal, and had no beast at all before or behind. It purred along the road ten times the speed of the others and was gone in smoke before I had time to really see it. A few dragons who had ignored the other vehicles shied now and hissed. Spider called to me as I stared after it, "Just one of the wonders of Branning-at-sea."
I turned back to calm the offended lizards.
The next time I glanced at the road I saw the picture. It was painted on a large stand mounted by the pavement, so that all who passed could see it. It was the face of a young woman with cotton white hair, a childish smile, her shoulders shrugged. She had a small chin, and green eyes that looked widened by some pleasant surprise. Her lips were slightly opened over small, shadowed teeth.
THE DOVE SAYS, "ONE IS nice? NINE OR TEN ARE SO MUCH
nicer!"
I spelled out the caption and frowned. Batt was within hollering distance so I hollered. "Hey, who's that?"
"The Dove! " he howled, shaking the hair back from his shoulders. "He wants to know who the Dove is!" and the rest of them laughed too. As we got closer and closer to Branning-at-sea I became the butt of more and more jokes. I stuck closer to Green-eye; he didn't make fun of me. The first evening wind blew on the small of my back, the back of my neck and dried the sweat before more sweat rolled. I was staring dutifully at dragon scales when Green-eye stopped and pointed ahead. I looked up. Or rather down.
We had just crested a hill and the land sloped clear and away to-well, if it were twenty meters away it was a great toy. If it was twenty kilometers away it was great. Paved roads joined in that white and aluminium confusion at the purple water. Someone had started building it, and it had gotten out of hand and started building itself. There were grand squares where cactuses and palms grew and swayed; occasional hills where trees and lawns ranged about single buildings; many sections of tiny houses shoved and jammed on twisting streets. Beyond, from glazed docks ships plied the watery evening through the harbors.
"Branning-at-sea," Spider said, beside me. "That's it."
I blinked. The sun laid our shadows forward, warmed our necks, and blazed in the high windows. "It's large," I said.
"Right down there"-Spider pointed; I couldn't follow because there was so much to look at, so I listened-"is where we take the herd. This whole side of Branning lives off the herding business. The seaside survives through fishing and trade with the islands."
The others gathered around us. Familiar with the magnificence and squalor below, they grew silent as we went down.
We passed another signboard by the road. This time the Dove was shown from another angle, winking through the twilight.
THE DOVE SAYS, "THOUGH TEN ARE NICE, NINETY-NINE OR A HUNDRED ARE SO MUCH NICER! "
As I looked, lights came on above the twenty foot high face. The huge, insouciant expression leaped at us. I must have looked surprised because Spider thumbed towards it and said, "They keep it lighted all night so passersby can read what the Dove has to say." He smiled as though he were telling me something slightly off-color. Now he coiled his whip. "We'll camp down on the plateau there for the evening and go into Branning at dawn." Twenty minutes later we were circling the herd while Batt fixed dinner. The sky was black beyond the ocean, blue overhead. Branning cast up lights of its own, sparkling like sequins fallen on the shore. Perhaps it was the less violent terrain, perhaps it was Spider's calm, but the dragons were perfectly still.
Afterward, I lay down, but didn't sleep. Along with Knife I had mid-watch. When Green-eye shook my shoulder with his foot, I rolled to standing; anticipatory excitement kept me awake. I would leave the herders; where would I go next?
Knife and I circled the herd in opposite directions. As I rode I reflected: to be turned loose by my lonesome in the woods is a fairly comfortable situation. Turned loose among stone, glass, and a few million people is something else. Four-fifths of the herd slept. A few moaned towards Branning, less bright than before, still a sieve of light on the sea. I reined my mount to gaze at the-
"Hey up there, Dragonman! "
I looked down the bank.
A hunchback had stopped his dog cart on the road.
"Hi down there."
"Taking your lizards into Branning at dawn?" He grinned, then dug beneath the leather flap over the cart and pulled out a melon. "You hungry, herder?" He broke it open and made to hurl me half.

But I slung down from my mount and he held. I scrambled to the road. "Hey, thank you Lo stranger."
He laughed. "No Lo for me."
Just then the dog, looking back and forth between the man and me, began to whine. "Me. Me. Me hungry. Me."
The hunchback handed me my half, then ruffled the dog's ears. "You had your dinner."
"I'll share mine," I said.
The hunchback shook his head. "He works for me and I feed him."
He broke apart his piece and tossed the piece to the animal, who drove his snout into it, champing. As I bit into my melon, the stranger asked me, "Where are you from, dragon man?"
I gave him the name of my village.
"And this is your first time to Branning-at-sea?"
"It is. How could you tell?"