"Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 08 - The Chantry Guild" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

oncoming winter, when he had just turned thirteen.
Now, autumn's birch, white-armed, disrobedfor sorrow, In wounded days, as that weak sun slips down
From failing year and sodden forest mold, Pray for old memories like tarnished bronze;

And when night sky and mist, like sisters, creeping, Bring on the horned owl, hooting at no moonMourn
like a lute beneath the wotfskin winds, That on the hollow log sound hollow horn.

-A chime rang its silvery note on his ear. A woman's voice spoke. Hal, said the voice of Ajela,
conference in twenty minutes. I'll be there, he said.

He sighed. Clear! he added, to the invisible technological magic that surrounded him. The library, the
estate and the rain winked out. He was back in his quarters at the Final Encyclopedia, in orbit far above
the surface of the world he had just been experiencing. The rain and the wind and the library, all as they
would actually be at the estate in this moment, were left now far below him.

He was surrounded by silence -silence, four paneled walls and three doors; one door leading to the
corridor outside, one to his bedroom, and one to the carrel that was his ordinary

THE CHANTRY GUILD 9

workroom. About him in the main room where lie stood were the usual padded armchair floats and a
desk, above a soft red carpeting.

He was once again where he had spent most of the past three years, in that technological marvel that
was an artificial satellite of the planet Earth, the Final Encyclopedia. Permanently in orbit about Earth.
Earth, which in this twenty-fourth century its emigrated children now called Old Earth, to distinguish it
from the world of New Earth, away off under the star of Sirius and settled three hundred years since.

Around him again was only the silence-of his room, and of the satellite itself. The Final Encyclopedia
floated far above the surface of Earth and just below the misty white phase-shield that englobed and
protected both world and Encyclopedia. Too far off to be heard, even if there had been atmosphere
outside to carry the sound, were the warships which patrolled beneath that shield, guarding both the
satellite and Earth against any intrusion by the warships of ten of the thirteen Younger Worlds, beyond
the shield.

Hal stood for a moment longer. He had twenty minutes, he reminded himself'. So, for one last time, he
sank into a cross-legged, seated position on the carpeting and let his mind relax into that state that was a
form of concentration; although its physical and mental mechanisms were not the usual ones for that
mental state.

They were, in fact, a combination of the techniques taught him as a boy by Walter the InTeacher-one of
those three who had died eleven years ago-and his own self-evolved creative methods for writing the
poetry he had used to make. He had developed the synthesis while he was still young; and Walter the
InTeacher, the Exotic among his tutors, had still been alive. Hal remembered how deeply and childishly
disappointed he had been then, when he had not been able to show off the picture his mind had just
generated, of the birch tree in the wet autumn wood. The raw image of the poem he had just written.

But Walter, usually so mild and comforting in all things, had told him sternly then that instead of being
unhappy he should feel lucky that he had been able to do it at all. The ability Walter had said, was not
unknown, but rare; and few people ha@ ever been able to conceptualize on that level. He had explained