"Kathleen Ann Goonan - Nanotech 02- Mississippi Blues" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

even immortals, they discovered, like to know .
And several people jumped off the bridge, thinking that they could
still fly.
Against the sunset a tremendous city shimmered, the last low
rays of sun highlighting in gold and silver a perfectly melded vision
of all the most wondrous manifestations of architectural thought in
recent centuries. Art Deco and Beaux Arts, Chicago School and
Postmodern, New Nan and even nineteenth-century stolid and
gargoyled Victorian skyscrapers filled the skyline, perfectly placed
so as to entrance the eye and fill the heart with wonder and awe.
Anyone not from the City might have felt more terror than awe at
the huge Flowers blossoming from every high point, resembling
roses, gladiolus, daisies, an entire spectrum of lilies, stretching to
catch the last rays of sun.
 Even more terrifying was the abrupt eruption of a swarm of
human-sized Bees rising from the Cincinnati Zoo, at the heart of the
City, as the EarthтАЩs turning intensified the burning, golden,
disappearing sun.
The Bees swept over the City, and low over the bridge, with a
sound like a thousand rushing engines, so close to the people on the
bridge that the wind from the BeesтАЩ wings stirred their hair.
The swarm turned west, flew round the bend in the Ohio River,
and vanished into the last gleaming fragment of light.
Around midnight, an old folktune rose from the City in unison,
from the bridge, from parks, from rooftops, from bars where people
spent hours on end sampling exotic brews gushing inexhaustibly
from the heart of the City:
Some rows up
But we floats down
Way down the Ohio to Shawneetown
And segued into:
Oh the river is up and the channel is deep
The wind is steady and strong
Oh wonтАЩt we have a jolly good time
As we go sailing along
Down the river, oh down the river, oh down the river we go
Down the river, oh down the river, oh down the Ohio!
A great shout arose and then they cycled through the songs again.
And again.
And again.
The entire populace was jolted awake, torn free from decades of
servitude to one womanтАЩs dreams, during which they had constantly
re-created a living tapestry of novels, plays, music. TheyтАЩd had no
individual lives during this time.
But then Verity came, and changed the structure of the Cincinnati
system.
From time to time people tried to access histories they did not
remember by pressing their hands to glowing interstices running up
the sides of the magnificent buildings. Their modified bodies
framed queries translated into metapheromones by receptors in their