"Slow Sculpture by Theodore Sturgeon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Award Stories 6)

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SLOW SCULPTURE

Theodore Sturgeon

He didn't know who he was when she met him--well, not
many people did. He was in the high orchard doing some-
thing under a pear tree. The land smelled of late summer
and wind--bronze, it smelled bronze.
He looked up at a compact girl in her mid-twenties, at
a fearless face and eyes the same color as her hair, which
was extraordinary because her hair was red-gold. She
looked down at a leather-skinned man in his forties, at a
gold-leaf electroscope in 'his hand, and felt she was an
intruder.
She said, "Oh" in what was apparently the right way.
Because he nodded once and said, "Hold this" and
there could then be no thought of intrusion.
She kneeled down beside him and took the instrument,
holding it exactly where he positioned her hand. He
moved away a little and struck a tuning fork against his
kneecap.
"What's it doing?"
He had a good voice, the kind of voice strangers notice
and listen to.
She looked at the delicate leaves of gold in the glass
shield of the electroscope.
"They're moving apart."
He struck the tuning fork again and the leaves pressed
away from one another.
"Much?"
"About forty-five degrees when you hit the fork."
"Good--that's about the most we'll get." From a
pocket of his 'bush jacket be drew a sack of chalk dust
and dropped a small handful on the ground. "I'll move
now. You stay right there and tell me how much the
leaves separate."
He traveled around the pear tree in a zigzag course,
striking his tuning fork while she called out numbers
ten degrees, thirty, five, twenty, nothing. Whenever the
gold foil pressed apart to maximum--forty degrees or
more--he dropped more chalk. When he was finished the
tree was surrounded by a rough oval of white dots. He
took out a notebook and diagramed them and the tree,
put away the book and took 'the electroscope out of her
hands.
. "Were you looking for something?" he asked her.
"No," she said. "Yes."