"Kim Stanley Robinson - A Short, Sharp Shock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

talked most of the time but we couldn't see who you talked to. Garth carried the mirror. The spine
dropped into a forest and you ran all the way, and we chased you. Then it seemed you were never going
to see us, and so Garth said we should push you back through the mirror. We did that and you fell
through, unconsciousтАФ"

"You could just push me through?"

"No, it wouldn't work at first, it was hard as glass when I tried it, but Garth said it had to be at sunset, on
the spine, with a kessel hawk hunting in the western sky. We waited three days until we saw one, and
then it worked. But after we got you through you were asleep again. So we waited and then we fell
asleep too. I'm hungry."

The others were stirring at the sound of their voices. They woke and the beach air was filled with the
chatter of voices over the hiss of broken waves. As they shared their stories they walked to the sea
without volition, drawn by their hunger. The peninsula had changed to something like what Thel had
traversed in his time beyond the mirror: a low forested mound snaking through the sea, sandy moon bays
alternating with chalky headlands. They walked to the next bay, which faced north. Here the beach was a
steep pebbly shingle that roared and grumbled at every wave's swift attack and retreat, and among the
millions of shifting oval pebbles, which when wet looked like semiprecious stones, they found crabs,
beach eels, scraps of seaweed that the facewomen declared edible, and one surprised-looking fish,
tossed up by a wave and snatched by Garth. As they made their catch they wandered west, marking the
sine curve of the hours with their passage until the sun was low. Knobs of old worn sandstone stood here
and there like vertebrae out of the scrubby forest, and they climbed to one of these bony boulder knots
collecting dead wood as they went, and in the sunset made a fire using Garth's firestone and knocker.
Every scrap of the sea's provender tasted better than the last, the least scrap finer than a master chef's
creation. Clouds came in from the south as if a roll of carpet had been kicked over them, and the sinking
sun tinted the frilly undersurface a delicate yellow. Their fire blazed through the long dusk, and in the wind
the whitecaps tossed, so that it felt like they were on the deck of a ship.

Each day they foraged west, and spent the night on knolls. "We'll reach your folk soon?" Thel asked the
facewomen.

"No. Many days. But when we do, you can continue on your way speeded by our horses."

They hurried on, their hunger not quite held in check by the wrack of the waves. The peninsula
straightened, and looking back they could see the big curve of land rising to the great ridge of Oia. Ahead
of them the spit seemed, judging from the high points, to continue its gentle rise and fall indefinitely. They
hiked on the beaches, over wet round stones that clacked together all the day long. Thel and the
swimmer dove into the waist-high shore break more than once, ostensibly to try to catch briefly glimpsed
fish, but really just for the feel of the dive and the wave's dizzying lift. In the evenings around the fire they
pulled the mirror from its bag and contemplated it cautiously. Each of them saw different things in it, and
they couldn't agree on its color. Salmon, gold, copper, lapis; such divergence of perception was
frightening, and they snapped at each other and put it away, and slept uneasily.

One dawn Thel woke. The night before the mirror had been left face up on a rock, and he circled his
hand over it, looking down at eyes, hair, red stones, years. The swimmer inched over the sandstone and
lay prone beside him, their heads together as they peered down into it, as if looking down a well. "What
is it?" Thel said.

"It shows the truth," the swimmer said, then smiled. "Or maybe it just makes things pretty."