"Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Dushau Trilogy 01 - Dushau" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lichtenberg Jacqueline)

create the awesome three-dimensional image that formed in the green haze before Krinata's chair.

A sneer cliff of red marble rose to a magenta and silver sky. A frothy white waterfall crashed downward,
spuming outward on both sides. Enormous winged creatures, blue and turquoise, floated in the updrafts
beside the cliff, diving and calling musically to one another, occasionally snapping up some water creature
that had been swept over the fall and was tumbling downward through the air.
It was thrilling, breathtaking, beautiful enough to make her cry with yearning to go there. Suddenly r the
rare magic happened. Once in ten debriefings, her imagination transported her into a waking dream, fully
fleshed out and dimensionally real, as if her brain centers were directly stimulated. She became one of the
Oliat officers walking the surface of the new planet, breathing its scents, testing its air on her skin,
knowing it intimately with both mind and body. The fine line between intellectual imagination and living
dream could not be crossed purposively. When it came, she had to relax and let it happen.

Sleep-deprived, emotionally exhausted, she needed to dream. This precious experience had never
happened with Jindigar before, and somewhere within was the shrill panic that she'd never have this
chance again. She grabbed for it avidly, and found it easy to float away to Margo.

The scene panned around and she saw the foothills rippling away into a plain covered with blue and mint
green forest, dotted with lakes. They moved through the air until she could see the edge of the forest, and
then an infinite rolling plain with tall waving grasses, grazing herds, streams and lakes. A long-tailed,
streamlined silver bird dove into one of the mirror-bright lakes and came up with a big, fat wriggling
creature. The bird perched on a boulder and feasted undisturbed. Part of her could become that bird.

Krinata asked aloud, "What eats the fisher-bird?"

Her skeptical curiosity, trained to parallel that of prospective settlers, was her most valuable contribution.
Simple holographs could show what the exploring or developing teams wanted customers to see. She
had to use the creativity of the Oliat to present the world as it really was.

As they watched, a sinuous pouncing creature stalked the feasting bird. Figures for its height and weight,
its poisonous claws, and the size of its ripping teethтАФas well as the fact that it would gladly attack
mammalsтАФflowed unseen across Krinata's screen. It was Clorinda's job to synthesize that data with the
Oliat's created visions.

The pouncer attacked. The fisher abandoned its kill and flew at the pouncer. The fight raged back and
forth across the meadow, Krinata living each side simultaneously. The fisher won, finally gutting and
pecking at the pouncer's entrails. She cut off the pain/triumph and focused on the animal species
population statistics on her screen.

"What would happen to this land with both these species exterminated?"

The grasses withered, the streams and lakes expanded, eroding the soil. She felt an inward searing
desolation.

"Could we build a city here?"

A city sprang upтАФas the Oliat knew it must look if built here. Shiny buildings repelled the oppressive
summer heat, vehicles swarmed through the air and on the ground, surface transports roared in with
produce and provisions for the thriving metropolis. A canal was dug to channel the abundant water of the
lowland, and ships nosed up and down that waterway, visiting other outlying towns. It could be one of