"Robert Reed - Melodies Played upon Cold, Dark Worlds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

I nodded, trying to appear understanding.

Amma gave me a long, sad stare. Then with a helpless tone, she asked, "Do you know how small we
are?"

"We are small," I agreed. "In a lot of waysтАФ"

"Tiny. And so temporary." She folded her arms across her chest. "When I look at the sky, my heart
aches."

I was impressed. She was sweet and agonizingly sensitive, and peculiar in so many ways, and I was a
little glad that the medicines couldn't cure her.

I said, "Amma," with a warm, caring voice.

I told her, "It's an enormous universe. I know. I've got a good imagination, too. But I can't picture the
distances, and all the darkness out there. Billions of years old, and billions of light-years across. And
that's just what we can see. The revised inflationary model claims that the visible universe is just a tiny
fleck drifting inside the creation тАж"

I was mentioning concepts that held no meaning for her. The revised inflationary model? Her eyes lifted,
baffled by those deceptively simple words.

I steered back to us. To human beings.

"Yet we matter," I proclaimed. With a genuine fire, I said, "Our species is going to last. People are going
to spread through the universe and prosper, and in the next billion years, we're going to do astonishing
and wonderful things. Beautiful things. We'll become gods, or something nearly that big."

In my ramblings, she found something worthwhile.

Something intriguing.

With a sly little smile, she admitted, "I had a feeling about you, Tony. From the very first."

I didn't have the same feeling about her. But I had enough poise to color the truth, admitting, "When I first
saw you, I knew you were different."

"Everyone does," she purred.

Then she rose out of her chair, and with an abrupt and irresistible confidence, she walked around the
round table. Cool hands took me by the head, and then dropped to my shoulders, and she hugged me
before kissing me on the ear and neck and the line of my jaw, slowly nibbling her way towards my
mouth.

I kissed her back, and stood.

We stayed on our feet for a little while. For a long while.

Then Amma stepped out of her pink shoes and pants and panties, leaping back onto the table, bare legs