"Dan Simmons - Orphans of the Helix" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

"It's stormy," said Dem Lia, seeing the flight path of so many of the Ousters now rolling and
sliding and surging along these shock fronts of ions, magnetic fields, and cosmic rays, holding
their positions with wings of glowing forcefield energy as the solar wind propagated first forward
and then backward along the magnetic-field lines, and finally surfing the shock waves forward
again as speedier bursts of solar winds crashed into more sluggish waves ahead of them, creating
temporary tsunami that rolled out-system and then flowed backward like a heavy surf rolling back
in toward the blazing beach of the G8 sun.
The Ousters handled this confusion of geometries, red lines of magnetic-field lines, yellow
lines of ions, blue lines of cosmic rays, and rolling spectra of crashing shock fronts with
seeming ease. Dem Lia glanced once out to where the surging heliosphere of the red giant met the
seething heliosphere of this bright G8 star and the storm of light and colors there reminded her
of a multihued, phosphorescent ocean crashing against the cliffs of an equally colorful and
powerful continent of broiling energy. A rough place.
"Let's return to the regular display," said Dem Lia, and instantly the stars and forest ring
and fluttering Ousters and slowing Helix were back -- the last two items quite out of scale to
show them clearly.
"Saigy├┤," said Dem Lia, "please invite all of the other AIs here now."
The smiling monk raised thin eyebrows. "All of them here at once?"
"Yes."
They appeared soon, but not instantly, one figure solidifying into virtual presence a second or
two before the next.
First came Lady Murasaki, shorter even than the diminutive Dem Lia, the style of her three-
thousand-year-old robe and kimono taking the acting commander's breath away. What beauty Old Earth
had taken for granted, thought Dem Lia. Lady Murasaki bowed politely and slid her small hands in
the sleeves of her robe. Her face was painted almost white, her lips and eyes were heavily
outlined, and her long, black hair was done up so elaborately that Dem Lia -- who had worn short
hair most of her life -- could not even imagine the work of pinning, clasping, combing, braiding,
shaping and washing such a mass.
Ikky├╗ stepped confidently across the empty space on the other side of the virtual Helix a
second later. This AI had chosen the older persona of the long-dead Zen Poet: Ikky├╗ looked to be
about seventy, taller than most Japanese, quite bald, with wrinkles of concern on his forehead and
lines of laughter around his bright eyes. Before the flight had begun, Dem Lia had used the ship's
history banks to read about the fifteenth-century monk, poet, musician, and calligrapher: it
seemed that when the historical, living Ikky├╗ had turned seventy, he had fallen in love with a
blind singer just forty years his junior and scandalized the younger monks when he moved his love
into the temple to live with him. Dem Lia liked Ikky├╗.
Basho appeared next. The great haiku expert chose to appear as a gangly seventeenth-century
Japanese farmer, wearing the coned hat and clog shoes of his profession. His fingernails always
had some soil under them.
Ry├┤kan stepped gracefully into the circle. He was wearing beautiful robes of an astounding blue
with gold trim. His hair was long and tied in a queue.
"I've asked you all here at once because of the complicated nature of this rendezvous with the
Ousters," Dem Lia said firmly. "I understand from the log that one of you was opposed to
translating down from Hawking space to respond to this distress call."
"I was," said Basho, his speech in modern post-Pax English but his voice gravel-rough and as
guttural as a Samurai's grunt.
"Why?" said Dem Lia.
Basho made a gesture with his gangly hand. "The programming priorities to which we agreed did
not cover this specific event. I felt it offered too great a potential for danger and too little
benefit in our true goal of finding a colony world."