"Ursula K. LeGuin - The New Atlantis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

the color of turquoise.

The change continued. The opacity became veined and thinned. The dense, solid color began to
appear translucent, transparent. Then it seemed as if we were in the heart of a sacred jade, or the
brilliant crystal of a sapphire or an emerald.

As at the inner structure of a crystal, there was no motion. But there was something, now, to see.
It was as if we saw the motionless, elegant inward structure of the molecules of a precious stone.
Planes and angles

appeared about us, shadowless and clear in that even, glowing, blue-green light.

These were the walls and towers of the city, the streets, the windows, the gates.

We knew them, but we did not recognize them. We did not dare to recognize them. It had been so
long. And it was so strange. We had used to dream, when we lived in this city. We had lain down,
nights, in the rooms behind the windows, and slept, and dreamed. We had all dreamed of the
ocean, of the deep sea. Were we not dreaming now?

Sometimes the thunder and tremor deep below us rolled again, but it was faint now, far away; as
far away as our memory of the thunder and the tremor and the fire and the towers falling, long
ago. Neither the sound nor the memory frightened us. We knew them.

The sapphire light brightened overhead to green, almost green-gold. We looked up. The tops of
the highest towers were hard to see, glowing in the radiance of light. The streets and doorways
were darker, more clearly defined.

In one of those long, jewel-dark streets something was movingтАФ something not composed of
planes and angles, but of curves and arcs. We all turned to look at it, slowing, wondering as we
did so at the slow ease of our own motion, our freedom. Sinuous, with a beautiful flowing,
gathering, rolling movement, now rapid and now tentative, the thing drifted across the street
from a blank garden wall to the recess of a door. There, in the dark blue shadow, it was hard to
see for a while. We watched. A pale blue curve appeared at the top of the doorway. A second
followed, and a third. The moving thing clung or hovered there, above the door, like a swaying
knot of silvery cords or a boneless hand, one arched finger pointing carelessly to something above
the lintel of the door, something like itself, but motionlessтАФa carving. A carving in jade light. A
carving in stone.
Delicately and easily the long curving tentacle followed the curves of the carved figure, the eight
petal-limbs, the round eyes. Did it recognize its image?

The living one swung suddenly, gathered its curves in a loose knot, and darted away down the
street, swift and sinuous. Behind it a faint cloud of darker blue hung for a minute and dispersed,
revealing again the carved figure above the door: the sea-flower, the cuttlefish, quick, great-eyed,
graceful, evasive, the cherished sign, carved on a thousand walls, worked into the design of
cornices, pavements, bandies, lids of jewel boxes, canopies, tapestries, tabletops, gateways.

Down another street, about the level of the first-floor windows, came a flickering drift of
hundreds of motes of silver. With a single motion all turned toward the cross street, and glittered
off into the dark blue