"Sharon Green - Ram Song" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Sharon)

2 RAM SONG
stood in awe of the man they called Kurt Prime. She looked back at
the console. The man was bending over his instruments now, his
brows beetling. The yellow and amber warning lights reflected
sharply from his cap and she narrowed her eyes.
"The effect is increasing," he said. "You can see that yourself."
She nodded slowly. "We'll do it then." He straightened. "We should
go now." Again the hesitation. She looked up as if she could see
through the ceiling, as if she could see the lake many kilometers
above her reflecting like blue sky on the village beneath. "We'll
have to bring the interface. He'll need it."
The immortal, Kurt Kraus, walked alone through the ancient
subtropical forest ringing Sky Lake. Brushing a thick, dark lock
of hair from his eyes, he looked up at the tangle of branches
silhouetted in the brilliant light of midday.
He had begun to see the woods with new eyes nowтАФnot a static
grouping of leaves and bark, but instead a slow-moving war dance,
a frozen battle for supremacy. There a giant mahogany fought with
another for the light from a bogus sun. On a slight rise above him
a young gumbo limbo, springing from the rotting remains of its
parent tree, methodically starved its spindly siblings. But even
as it prospered, the gumbo limbo carried the instrument of its own
death: the dark green leaves and clinging aerial roots of a
strangler fig showed in the young tree's crownтАФanother cycle
beginning.
He moved to the shore of the shallow lake where five brown ducks
broke formation and waggled their tails at his approach. Across
the wind-rimed water ancient liveoaks marked the edge of the Ram's
mortal colony. Once it had been called New Renascence. Now it was
simply RenascenceтАФor The Choice.
At the juncture of far shore and woods stood a small group of
young men and women in their mid-teens. Children really, he


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Acknowledgments

thought Poignant young
RAM SONG 3
new lives. He watched as one by one they stepped forward. It was
time again for the choiceтАФthe Final Decision. He had seen it come
a dozen times during his retreat. Though he could not hear their
voices, though he had heard no voice except his own in the five
years of his isolation, he knew what it was they said.
That one, the girl with slim brown legs straight beneath her short
garment and eyes raised to meet the interrogatorтАФshe would choose
to deny immortality. But the next? Not that girl. Her head was
thrown back a trifle too high, her chin thrust out too far. Kurt
imagined that he could see the flash of defiance in her eyes,
though the distance was too great. That one would choose with a