"James P. Hogan - Mind, Machines and Evolution" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

faster than the capsules did through the tubes. How could anything be so far
away that it never got any bigger?

Kort didn't know why Merkon was moving toward Vaxis, which was strange because
Kort knew everything. He just said that was the way things had always been,
just as there had always been stars outside. When she asked him why there were
stars outside, he always talked about gas clouds, gravitation, temperatures,
densities, and other "machine things" that had nothing to do with what she
meant. She didn't want to know how the stars came to be out there, but why
anything should be out there at allтАФor for that matter, why there should be an
"out there" in the first place for anything to be in. He just didn't seem to
share her kind of curiosity about things.

"We know what we mean, don't we, Rassie," Taya said aloud, turning her head
toward the doll sitting on the sill, staring outward to share her
contemplation of the universe. "Kort knows so many things. . . . But there are
some things you just can't make him understand."

Rassie was a miniature version of herself, with long golden hair, light green
eyes, and soft arms and legs that were the same color as hers. Rassie, too,
wore a pale blue dressтАФTaya always dressed Rassie in the same things as she
herself felt like wearing on any particular day. She didn't know why; it was
just something she had always done.

Kort had made Rassie for herтАФhe often made things that he said it wasn't worth
setting up the machines to make. He had made Rassie a long time ago now, when
Taya was much smaller. He had been teaching her how to draw shapes and colors
on one of the screens, and soon she had learned to make pictures of the things
in the rooms where she lived, and pictures of Kort. Her favorite pictures had
been ones of herself, whom she could see reflected in the window when the
lights inside were turned up high. That was when Kort had made her a mirror.
But the mirror had made her sad because she could never pick up the little
girl that she saw in it, or touch her the way she could all her other things.
So Kort had gone away, and later he'd come back with Rassie.

At one time, before she'd learned that Rassie wasn't really the same as her,
she had taken Rassie everywhere and talked to her all the time. She didn't
talk to her so much now . . . but when Kort was away, there was nobody else to
talk to. "Kort said he couldn't think of a reason why anyone would ask
questions like that. How can anyone be as clever as Kort, yet never think of
asking a question like that?" Taya studied the doll's immobile features for a
while, then sighed. "You can't tell me, can you? You can only tell me the
things I pretend you say, and this time I don't know what to pretend." She
moved the doll to stare in a different direction. "There. You stay here and
watch Vaxis. Tell me if it starts to get any bigger."

Taya straightened up from the sill and walked into the room behind the window
room. This was where, when she was smaller, she had spent most of her time
playing with the things that Kort made for her. These days she didn't play
with things so muchтАФshe preferred making things instead. Making things was