"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - Courting Disasters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

In the dream, he glided down a road as smooth as polished chrome. Night air cooled him, rushing along
his lines, curling around and backwashing him. Ahead of him, up the hill, two arcs of paired red lights
raced away, leaving traces of hot harsh breath, and the friction heat of tires on the road surface. Lines of
paired white lights raced toward him on the left. Nothing else existed. The road curved and he curved
with it, delighting in the interplay of speed and grip and curve. Mined metal and mica had never dreamed
of this as it lay under the earth, waiting only for water and rust and erosion. But since the furnace heat, the
crafting and tempering and shaping, this was all his purpose.

The world existed in only three dimensionsтАФbehind, ahead, and speed.

He raced on, meshing with traffic, riding for brief times in certain groupings, shifting and slowing or
speeding to change patterns.

More curves.
And at last, a curve too tight. He went too fast and turned too slowly. He plunged off into the nothingness
that was everything not The Road.

Ages earlier, a silence in the wood, broken only by the sound of dripping in the distance, and an
occasional waterfall of birdcall. Salt mists rose, weaving through the trees. Seasons passed, some
waterfat, some waterlean, each recording itself in the treeтАЩs trunk as it expanded outward, building and
shedding bark as it grew, upper tips reaching ever toward the sun. A slow tangle of gossip came through
the soil, ways to proof oneself against this moth or that moss, new mixtures of self to produce. The tree
shed seed every season.

One storm season, lightning struck the tree, cleaving to the heart and leaving a burning in its wake that ate
through many waterchains and foodchains, interrupting the pathways of life. An age the tree lingered
between giving itself back to the soil and repairing itself, but the new green needles grew, roots spread
beneath the soil, and life built new trails between.

Then the roads arrived, first logging roads, and small moving parts to a landscape that had never moved
before, but the movers would not die no matter how much one poisoned the soil; then tar roads which
fought back and carried more movers. This explosion of activity came late and happened quickly. The
tree woke up more than it ever had before. Something about the noise, the enriched air the movers made,
excited the tree. Trees farther back from the road did not understand. Questions took seasons to travel
to the road, and answers seasons more to travel back. The tree observed, until at last a mover came and
cracked it. Roots bereft of needles, needles bereft of roots, waterchains broken, no tissues still alive to
carry the necessary information for healing.

тАФBut now I am part of something that lives while it moves,тАФ said the tree.

тАФBut now I am part of something that lives while it is still,тАФ said the car.

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Simon sat up gasping out of the dream, and fell back, the full pain in his chest hammering at him before he
shut off the message system.

тАФAnd we wonтАЩt let you die,тАФ they said. тАФThis is too interesting.тАФ