"Greg Egan - Glory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

****

4

The sun was rising ahead of them as they reached the top of the hill. Sando turned to Joan, and his face
became green with pleasure. тАЬLook behind you,тАЭ he said.

Joan did as he asked. The valley below was hidden in fog, and it had set-tled so evenly that she could
see their shadows in the dawn light, stretched out across the top of the fog layer. Around the shadow of
her head was a circular halo like a small rainbow.

тАЬWe call it the NiahтАЩs light,тАЭ Sando said. тАЬIn the old days, people used to say that the halo proved that
the Niah blood was strong in you.тАЭ

Joan said, тАЬThe only trouble with that hypothesis being that you see it around your headтАжand I see it
around mine.тАЭ On Earth, the phenomenon was known as a тАЬglory.тАЭ The particles of fog were scattering
the sunlight back toward them, turning it one hundred and eighty degrees. To look at the shadow of your
own head was to face directly away from the sun, so the halo always appeared around the observers
shadow.

тАЬI suppose youтАЩre the final proof that Niah blood has nothing to do with it,тАЭ Sando mused.
тАЬThatтАЩs assuming IтАЩm telling you the truth, and I really can see it around my own head.тАЭ

тАЬAnd assuming,тАЭ Sando added, тАЬthat the Niah really did stay at home, and didnтАЩt wander around the
galaxy spreading their progeny.тАЭ

They came over the top of the hill and looked down into the adjoining riverine valley. The sparse brown
grass of the hillside gave way to a lush violet growth closer to the water. JoanтАЩs arrival had delayed the
flooding of the valley, but even alien interest in the Niah had only bought the ar-chaeologists an extra
year. The dam was part of a long-planned agricultural development, and however tantalizing the
possibility that Joan might reveal some priceless insight hidden among the NiahтАЩs тАЬuseless abstractions,тАЭ
that vague promise could only compete with more tangible considerations for a limited time.

Part of the hill had fallen away in a landslide a few centuries before, revealing more than a dozen
beautifully preserved strata. When Joan and Sando reached the excavation site, Rali and Surat were
already at work, clearing away soft sedimentary rock from a layer that Sando had dated as belonging to
the NiahтАЩs тАЬtwilightтАЭ period.

Pirit had insisted that only Sando, the senior archaeologist, be told about JoanтАЩs true nature; Joan refused
to lie to anyone, but had agreed to tell her colleagues only that she was a mathematician and that she was
not permit-ted to discuss her past. At first this had made them guarded and resentful, no doubt because
they assumed that she was some kind of spy sent by the authorities to watch over them. Later it had
dawned on them that she was genuinely interested in their work, and that the absurd restrictions on her
topics of conversation were not of her own choosing. Nothing about the NoudahтАЩs language or
appearance correlated strongly with their recent divi-sion into nationsтАФwith no oceans to cross, and a
long history of migration they were more or less geographically homogeneousтАФbut JoanтАЩs odd name and
occasional faux pas could still be ascribed to some mysterious exoti-cism. Rali and Surat seemed content
to assume that she was a defector from one of the smaller nations, and that her history could not be made
explicit for obscure political reasons.