"G. David Nordley - The Forest Between the Worlds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nordley G. David)

The forest had a profusion of detail, but all the details looked much alike to Akil.

"How do you know where weтАЩre going?" he asked.

"Look for the yellow-brick-fruit tags." Marianne pointed above with her staff. "ThereтАЩs one."

Akil looked for a while and finally spotted a basketball-sized yellow globe hanging from a low branch,
patterned with what looked for all the world like alternating rows of yellow bricks. A few more seconds
of searching revealed another one about thirty meters ahead.

"Those are native to the outer pole archipelago, so any that you find here, we put there. If you pick them
before they get ripe, they seem to last forever. At least theyтАЩve lasted for the couple of months since
weтАЩve been here."

"Okay, we follow the yellow-brick-fruit road, then."

Marianne laughed at the reference. "ThatтАЩs the general idea. The Forest People always come down the
same base trunk to visit us. WeтАЩll assume she went up the same way. The path slants up the aureole wall,
then heads straight up the mountain till we get to the first base trunk ring, about ten kilometers from the
central caldera. Then we circle north until we hit the right main trunk and ascend about ten kilometers."

***
An hour into their trek, Akil noticed that the canopy blocked the view above, forming a green and yellow
sky. Oshatsh, approaching the horizon now, shone under this, and the shadows of tree trunks became
more and more numerous until the effect was one of shafts of sunlight reaching in, rather than individual
shadows. But there would be no problem with light until the eclipse. Oshatsh set was a long-extended
affair, as light refracted through the least curved horizon of the deep atmosphereтАУand the vast half globe
of a waxing Shadow would light the sky for another hour, though less and less as the umbra of Haze bit
into it. He looked for spots, but Oshatsh was a settled old K5 star with a generally placid surface.

For the next hour, the path led up the slope of the volcano around which the forest grew. The terrain was
awesome; huge blocks of "ah-ah" lava as large as spaceships jutted up through the carpet of debris,
massive trunks and vines headed endlessly skyward into the mist, and webs that seemed made of thin
vines filled in much of the space. Though he had "flown" through it in virtual reality, clearly any real flight
by anything much larger than a duck was impossible. Sticking close to the ground, they got under most of
it and lifted up any obstructing web with their walking sticks.

"Where are the spiders for these webs?" he asked.

"The webs are the тАШspiders,тАЩ " Marianne said. "Sort of. Look, weтАЩve given these things descriptive
common names according to whatever they remind us of from home. But never forget that webs arenтАЩt
webs, pseudosimians arenтАЩt apes, and flying elephants donтАЩt act anything like terrestrial elephants. Look,
over there. A webтАЩs got a butterball."

He looked in time to see a web collapse around what looked like a yellowish soccer ball. The soccer ball
had a beak like a parrotтАЩs at one end and four ridiculously small, claw-tipped wings arranged around its
belly. It squawked once, then vanished from view, as layer after layer of white netting wrapped itself
around the struggling creature.