"Ian R. Macleod - New Light On The Drake Equation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

dead.

"тАж physicist. But in clearing out and revising her responsibilities, it's come to my attention that monies
have been allocated to your project which, I regret to say тАж"

Tom span the thing forward until he came to the bit at the end when the young man, who had one eye
green and one eye blue-and nails like talons, so perhaps he too was a flyer, although he didn't look quite
thin enough and seemed too easily scared-announced that he'd left a simulacrum ai of his business self on
the card, which would be happy to answer any pertinent questions, although the decision to withdraw
funds was, regrettably, quite irrevocable. The ai was there, of course, to save the chance that Tom might
try to bother this man of business with feeble pleas. But Tom knew he was lucky to have got what he got
from that source, and even luckier that they weren't talking about suing him to take it all back.

Aston University. England. The smell of different air. Different trees. If there was one season that
matched the place, a mood that always seemed to be hanging there in the background even on the
coldest or hottest or wettest of days, it had to be fall, autumn. How long had it been now? Tom tried not
to think-that was one equation which even to him always came back as a recurring nothing. He noticed
instead that the wineglass that the pretty young girl had been drinking from bore the red imprint of her
lipstick, and was almost sad to see it go, and with it the better memories he'd been trying to conjure,
when Jean-Beno├оt finally bustled up and plonked a glass of cloudy yellow liquid, which Tom wasn't really
sure that he wanted any longer, down in front of him. Voil├а. Merci. Pidgin French as he stared at the
cards from Madame Brissac's incomprehensible pigeonholes. But he drank it anyway, the pastis. Back in
one. At least it got rid of the taste of the absinthe.

And the day was fine, the market was bustling. It would be a pity to spoil this frail good mood he was
building with messages which probably included the words regret, withdraw, or at the very least, must
query тАж This square, it was baguettes and Edith Piaf writ large, it was the Eiffel Tower in miniature. The
warm smells of garlic and slightly dodgy drains and fine dark coffee. And those ridiculous little poodles
dragged along by those long-legged women. The shouts and the gestures, the old widows in black who
by now were probably younger than he was muttering to themselves and barging along with their stripy
shopping bags like extras from the wrong film and scowling at this or that vial-induced wonder. And a
priest in his cassock stepping from the church, pausing in the sunlight at the top of the steps to take in the
scene, although he had wings behind him which he stretched as if to yawn, and his hair was scarlet.
Another flyer. Tom smiled to think how he got on with his congregation, which was mostly those
scowling old women, and thought about ordering-why not?-another pastis тАж

Then he noticed a particular figure wandering beside the stalls at the edge of the market where displays of
lace billowed in the wind which blew off the karst and squeezed in a warm light breeze down between
the washing-strung tenements. It couldn't be, of course. Couldn't be. It was just that lipstick on the edge
of that glass which had prickled that particular memory. That, and getting a message from England, and
that woman dying, and losing another income source, all of which, if he'd have let them, would have
stirred up a happy-sad melange of memories. She was wearing a dark blue sleeveless dress and was
standing in a bright patch of sunlight which flamed on her blonde hair and made it hard for him to see her
face. She could have been anyone, but in that moment, she could have been Terr, and Tom felt the
strangely conflicting sensations of wanting to run over and embrace her, and also to dig a hole for himself
where he could hide forever right here beneath this caf├й paving. He blinked. His head swam. By the time
he'd refocused, the girl, the woman, had moved on. A turn of bare arm, a flash of lovely calf. Why did
they have to change themselves like they did now? Women were perfect as they were. Always had been,
as far as Tom was concerned-or as best he could remember. Especially Terr. But then perhaps that had
been an illusion, too.