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

moving scenes, just as real тАж just as strange тАж"

Mak turned to Hodges. "Is it some sort of animated diorama?"

"It's got to be some kind of hologram. A moving hologram!" At the top of the
ladder, Dr. Smith finally looked down. "You've got to come up here and see this! I
just wanted to look at the inside of the eye on this carving closely. I thought with
the laser light I might detect crystalline structures, perhaps get a clue to what the
eyes were made from. But I saw pictures!" He started down the ladder. "You've all
just got to go up there and take a look!" Smith's indrawn breath roared in Rimkin's
ear. "It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen."

"Still think somebody came by and built this today just to get us off on a wild-goose
chase, eh, Rimkin?" Hodges chided. "Let me go up and look. I've got my own beam,
Dr. Smith." Hodges started up the rungs as Smith reached the bottom.

Frowning behind his faceplate, Rimkin took out his own flash. For a moment, he
fondled the tube; then he went back over the rusty sand tongues and purple stone
to where the head had fallen. He looked at the whole eye. He looked at the broken
one. He did not know what perversity made him crouch before the latter. He flicked
on his laser beam.

┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖
It took half an hour for Mak, Hodges, Jimmi, and Jones to climb the ladder, watch
for two or three minutes, then climb down. They were gathering to go back to the
skimmer when Jimmi saw Rimkin. She loped over to him.
She laughed when she saw what he was doing. "Now, aren't we a bunch of dopes!
Some of us could have looked at this one down here. Come on, we're going back
now."

Rimkin switched off his beam but still crouched before the tilted visage.

"Oh, come on, Rimky. They're starting back already."

Rimkin drew breath, then stood slowly. "All right." They started across the dressed
stone flooring. The sand, fine as dust, spewed about their white boots like powdered
blood.

┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖


II
The commons room of the skimmer was a traveling fragment of classical academia.
The celitex walls looked depressingly like walnut paneling. Above the brass-fixtured
folding desk surfaces, the microfilms were stacked behind naugahyde spines lettered
in gold leaf. There was a mantelpiece above the heating nook. Glowing plates shot
pale flickerings across the fur throws. The whole construct, with its balcony library
cubicles (and a bust of Richard Nielson, president of Inter-Nal University, on his
pedestal at the turn of the stairwell) was a half-serious joke of Dr. Edward Jones.
But the university people, by and large, were terribly appreciative of the extravagant