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

easy for Kort because he could do anything, but it had taken her a long time
to learnтАФand she still wasn't very good at some of the things he had shown
her. She liked forming shapes from the colored plastic that set hard and shiny
like glass. Often, she made things she could use, such as vases to put things
in, or plates to eat from, but at other times she enjoyed making shapes that
just looked nice. Kort couldn't understand what it meant for something to
"just look nice" . . . but that was because he only thought "machine things."

Then there were pictures that she drewтАФnot on the screens, but with her hands,
using the colored pens that Kort had made for her when she'd explained what
she wanted. He had never understood why she thought the pictures that she drew
were anything like the things she said they were like. He had told her that
the machines could make much better pictures in an instant. But Kort hadn't
been able to see that her pictures were supposed to look the way they did.
They were supposed to look like what she felt about thingsтАФnot like the things
really were, exactly. Kort had tried drawing with pens, too. He could draw
much faster than she could, and his pictures always looked exactly like the
things they were supposed to be . . . but she still didn't like them as much
as her pictures. They were always "machine pictures."

And she made clothes. Kort had made her clothes for her when she was smaller,
but later, when he found that she liked to think up her own, he had made her
some needles and other tools and shown her how to use them. She liked her
clothes better than the ones that Kort made, which were never pretty, but just
hung like the covers on some of the machines in other parts of Merkon. OnceтАФ
not very long ago, because she could still remember itтАФshe had tried not
wearing any clothes at all; but she'd found that she got dusty and itchy and
kept touching cold things, and sometimes she scratched herself. Kort had told
her that was why he'd started making clothes for her in the first place, when
she was very small, and she had soon started using them again.

There were lots of half-finished things lying around the workroom, but she
didn't feel like doing anything with them. She toyed for a while with one of
the glass mosaics that she sometimes made to hang on the walls, but grew
restless and went on through to the screen room and sat down at the console
with its rows of buttons. But she didn't feel like playing any games, or
learning about anything, or asking any questions, or practicing words and
math, or any of the other things that the machines could let her do. She had
to practice things like words and math, because if she didn't she forgot how
to do them. Kort never forgot anything and never had to practice. He could
multiply the biggest numbers she could think of before she could even begin,
and he had never gotten a single one wrong . . . but he couldn't tell a pretty
dress from one that wasn't, or a nice shape from one that was just silly. Taya
giggled to herself as she thought of the funny shapes that Kort had made
sometimes when he'd tried to find out what a "nice" one was, and how she had
laughed at them. Then, when he discovered that she enjoyed laughing, he had
started doing silly things just to make her laugh.

She decided that she wanted to talk to Kort, and touched the buttons to spell
out the sign that would connect a speaking channel to him. His voice answered