"Gordon R. Dickson - Alien Art" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"When you carve something," Lige said, patiently, "you make a shape like
something you're looking at, something you know. These carvings are made
to look like certain particular things, aren't they?"

"Things? Oh, sure, mister." Cary lit up. He reached out and easily
picked up the closest of the rocks, holding it lightly between thumb and
middle finger. Lige had needed to cup it in his hand to lift it
comfortably. "See, this here's a fool hen sitting on its nesting hole."

"And this. . . ." He put down the first rock and picked up the one next
to it. "That's a bitch swamp rat ready to have little ones . . . and
this's a poison thorn bush mudded up for winter. This is a-well, it's a
sort of a house Charlie lives in, himself. . . ."

He went on through the row, identifying each one. Lige stared at him a
moment, then picked up the rock Cary had put down last and turned it
over in his hands, looking at it from all angles. Cary waited, patiently
but tensely; but when Lige exchanged the rock in his hand for one of the
others, Cary got up suddenly and paced softly over to the room's one
window, to stand looking out.

Lige put down the last piece of rock he had picked up and glanced over
at the back of this man who had brought it, and the others, to him. Cary
still stood, looking out. Beyond him Lige could see, through the
transparent glass, a view of the park across the street, where voting
booths were being set up, and beyond, the downtown buildings in
Arcadia's Capital City. In every direction were the walls and tops of
eternally new-looking, poured-concrete structures with glass pane
windows. Except for the primitive nonvideo windows, it looked hardly
different than any city on any other planet, except for those on the
oldest and richest worlds. Bright scrolls of advertising signs filled
the spaces among and above the buildings with color.

A HAPPY NEW MORTGAGE TO ARCADIA--THE FUTURE IN ONE GRAND STEP: EHEU AND


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KILLEY, CONTRACTORS/BANKERS, said one of the signs. JOIN THE RANKS OF
INDUSTRIAL WORLD: VOTE TO REMORTGAGE ARCADIA, cried another. TRADE THE
WILDERNESS FOR PARKING LOTS, shouted a third.

Lige sighed inwardly. The promise of the signs was no less than would be
delivered-although few of the native Arcadians would realize the full
meaning of that delivery. All these new colonial worlds were alike-ready
to sell their souls to industrialize in the hopes that they would become
like Earth itself, or Alpha Centauri Four. Actually, the best they would
ever achieve would be a cheap imitation of the richness of those older
planets with their unbeatable head start. And the price would be deadly.