"Christopher Rowe - Another Word for Map is Faith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rowe Christopher)

weaknesses of her students, the number of days worth of supplies they carried, the nature of the curia
designed-instruments that Lucas exhibited a natural affinity for controlling. She began to nod. She'd
marshaled more than enough strength for the simple tectonic adjustment they'd planned, she could set her
own unquestionable faith against this new challenge if it revealed any deficiencies among her students. She
would make a show of asking their opinions, but she already knew that this was a challenge she could
meet.

Ford finally reached the top of the ridge line, not so much climbing as stumbling to the rocky area where
the others were gathering. Once he looked up and around, he said, тАЬThe survey team that found the error
in the ridge's orientation, they didn't come up here."

"They were specifically scouting for projects that the university could handle,тАЭ said Sandy. тАЬIf they'd been
up here, they would have called in the Mission Service, not us."

Spread out below them, ringed in tilled fields and dusted with a scattering of wooden fishing boats, was
an unmapped lake.
****
Sandy set Ford and the other bookish scholars to cataloguing all of the texts they'd smuggled along so
they could be integrated into her working bibliography. She hoped that one of them was currently
distracted by waterways the way that Ford was distracted by fauna.

Lucas set their observation instruments on tripods in an acceptably devout semicircle and Sandy
permitted two or three of the others to begin preliminary sight-line measurements of the lake's extent.

"It turns my stomach,тАЭ said Lucas, peering through the brass tube of a field glass. тАЬI grew up seeing the
worst kind of blasphemy, but I could never imagine that anyone could do something like this."

"You need to work on that,тАЭ said Sandy. Lucas was talking about the landscape feature crosshaired in
the glass, a clearly artificial earthworks dam, complete with a retractable spillway. тАЬMissionaries see
worse every day."

Lucas didn't react. He'd never abandoned his ambition, even after she'd laughed him down. Our sisters
and brothers in the Mission Service, she'd said with the authority that only someone who'd left that
order could muster, make up in the pretense of zeal what they lack in scholarship and access to the
divine. Anyone can move a mountain with whips and shovels.

The sketchers showed her their work, which they annotated with LucasтАЩ count and codification of
architectural structures, fence lines, and crops. тАЬThose are corn cribs,тАЭ he said. тАЬThat's a meeting house.
That's a mill."

This was the kind of thing she'd told him he should concentrate on. The best thing any of them had to
offer was the overlay of their own personal ranges of unexpected expertise onto the vast body of
accepted Cartography. Lucas's barbaric background, Ford's holographic memory, Carmen's cultured
scribing. Her own judgment.

"They're marmotas!тАЭ said Ford. They all looked up at where he'd been awkwardly turning the focus
wheel on one of the glasses. тАЬLike in my book!тАЭ He wasn't one to flash a triumphal grin, which Sandy
appreciated. She assented to the line of inquiry with a nod and he hurried over to the makeshift shelf that
some of his friends had been using to stack books while they wrote their list.