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

fa├зade, after a couple of weeks in the unsympathetic straits of the military back at
Bellona Base.

Mak sat on the hassock, rolling the sleeves of his wool shirt over his truckdriver
forearms. He had headed the Yugoslavian expedition that had unearthed Gevgeli
Man. Mak's boulderlike build (and what forehead he had was hidden by a falling
thatch of Sahara-colored hair) had brought the jokes in the anthropology
department to new nadirs: "This is Dr. Mak Hargus, the Gevgeli Man тАж eh, man тАж"

Mak raised the periscope of his briar from his shirt pocket. "Tell me about
holograms. I've seen them, of course, the three-dimensional images and all. But
how do they work? And how did the ancient Martians store all those pictures that
just pop up under laser light?"

Ling Wong Smith dropped his fists into the baggy pockets of his corduroy jacket. He
and Mak gazed over the ferns in the window-box. Outside the tri-plex pane, across
the dusty bruise of High Weir, the dark columnsтАФtwelve whole, seven
brokenтАФsketched the incredible culture they had viewed in the polished eyes along
the carved lintel.

Jimmi pushed her dark braid back from her shoulder and leaned on the banister to
look.

Ling Wong Smith turned away. "It's basically a matter of information storage, Mak."
He lowered himself to the arm of the easy chair, meshed his long fingers, and bent
forward so that his straight black hair slipped forward.
"The Martians certainly stored one hell of a lot of information in those eyes," Hodges
commented, coming jerkily down the stairs on her crutches. She was large, almost
as large (and soft) as Mak was large (and hard). She had a spectacular record in
cultural anthropology, and combined a sort of braying energy, enthusiastic idealism,
and a quite real sensitivity (she had been a cripple since birth), with which she had
managed to stagger through all sorts of bizarre cultures in East Africa, Anatolia, and
Southern Cambodia to emerge with thorough and cohesive accounts of religions,
mores, and manners. Her spacesuit was a prosthetic miracle that enabled her to
move as easily as anyone while she wore it. But outside it, she still used aluminum
crutches.

From his go game with Jones in the corner, Rimkin watched her lurch down the
stairs. She must think they're a psychological advantage, he decided.

"Go on, Ling. Now tell us all about holograms." She picked up one crutch and waved
it at the Chinese psychologist, only just avoiding the venerable Nielson.

"Information storage," Smith repeated. "Basically it's a photograph, taken without a
lens, but with perfectly parallel beams of lightтАФthe sort you get in laser light. The
only scattering is that which comes from the irregularities of the surface of the
object being recorded. The final plate looks like a blotchy configuration of graysтАФor
mud, if it's in color. But when you shine the parallel beams of a laser light on this
plate, you get a three-dimensional full-color image hanging over the plateтАФ"