"Samuel R. Delany - High Weir" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

The pain was incredible, but for a moment he was in control enough to get out: "I'm
just stiff.тАж I was in one position for so long. I just тАж just forgot."

"How long is a long time?" Hodges demanded.

"Almost all night, I guess." His arms weren't so bad. He pushed himself up and
propped himself against the stone.

Hodges bent down, picked up the flash (a feat she could only do with her specially
constructed suit) and turned it around. "You've been looking at the pretty pictures?"

Rimkin nodded. "Eh тАж yes."

She made a sound that had something of confusion, something of frustration. "You
just be glad I came looking for you!" She squatted beside him, and after much
maneuvering, got herself seated. "I can never sleep past five-thirty in the morning
anyway, and I got to thinking that perhaps I'd let myself get carried away a couple
of times with you. You know, back at the base, with all those ribbons and brass
flapping around, saying all those stupid things; we've all been under a bit of pressure.
Early this morning I was in the hall, saw the light from your reading machine, and
thought you might be up. I peeped in, because the door was open, but you weren't
in bed. I figured you must be in the library; but the doors down to the port were
open and your suit was goneтАФwell, this is the only thing around worth going out to
look at. You've been here since last night?"

"Yes. I have."

"Rimky," Hodges said after a few moments, "we're all oddballs in our way. You're
really not all that strange when you start looking at the rest of us. Maybe you're just
a little less used to fitting your angles into other people's spaces. But I have been
doing some thinking. And I have a feeling I've put my finger on the reason you were
so тАж well, preoccupied all last evening. Give me a listen and tell me if I'm right."

She rocked a couple of times beside him to settle inside her blimp. "Yesterday I said
something about the Martians having at least reached the level of the Greeks. But
that was before we discovered the moving hologram records. That at least brings
their technologyтАФor one facet of it, at any rateтАФto a level comparable to the middle
of the twentieth century. Or even well beyond. We still can't embed a moving
hologramic image into a crystal that just starts to play back automatically under
laser light. Now, if they were all that advanced, then there should be scads of written
evidence around here. If not things like books, then at least carved in the stone. But
there isn't a scratch, not a dated cornerstone, no mayor's name carved over the
doorway. Hell, there're at least mason's marks on the blocks in the Khufu Pyramid.
Now, you're our semanticist, Rimky, and it must be pretty important to you that
there be some evidence of a Martian language. But the fact that there isn't any
immediately visible about a structure this imposing, coupled with the fact that they
obviously stored so much visually тАж" Her voice hung on the word as a card player's
fingers might linger on a daring discard. "Well, there's a good possibility, Rimky, that
they just weren't a verbal race, and they somehow managed to achieve this level of