"Dan Simmons - The rise of Endymion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

in that second I thought of the first time I had seen her in the Valley of the Time Tombs on
Hyperion. She grinned when she saw me. "Hey, Boo," she called. It was an old joke based on some
book she had read as a very young child. "Hey, Scout," I called back, answering in the same in-
joke language. We stopped when we were five paces apart. My impulse was to hug her and hold her
close and beg her not to disappear again. I did not do that.
The rich, low light of morning threw long shadows behind the cholla cacti, grease bushes, and
sage, and bathed our all-sunburned skin in an orange glow. "How're the troops doing?" asked Aenea.
I could see that despite her promises to the contrary, she had been fasting during the past three
days. She had always been thin, but now her ribs almost showed through her thin cotton shirt. Her
lips were dry and cracked. "They upset?" she said.
"They're shitting bricks," I said. For years I'd avoided using my Home Guard vocabulary around
the kid, but she was sixteen now.
Besides, she had always used a saltier vocabulary than I knew.
Aenea grinned. The brilliant light illuminated the sandy streaks in her short hair. "That'd be
good for a bunch of architects, I guess."
I rubbed my chin, feeling the rough stubble there.
"Seriously, kiddo. They're pretty upset."
Aenea nodded. "Yeah. They don't know what to do or where to go now that Mr. Wright's gone." She
squinted toward the Fellowship compound, which showed up as little more than asymmetrical bits of
stone and canvas just visible above the cacti and scrub brush. Sunlight glinted off unseen windows
and one of the fountains. "Let's get everybody in the music pavilion and talk," said Aenea, and
began striding toward Taliesin.
And thus began our last full day together on Earth.

I am going to interrupt myself here. I hear my own voice on the 'scriber and remember the pause
in the telling at this point. What I wanted to do here was tell all about the four years of exile
on Old Earth -- all about the apprentices and other people at the Taliesin Fellowship, all about
the Old Architect and his whims and petty cruelties, as well as about his brilliance and childlike
enthusiasms. I wanted to describe the many conversations with Aenea over those forty-eight local
months (which -- as I never got tired of being amazed by -- corresponded perfectly to Hegemony/pax
standard months!) and my slow growth of understanding of her incredible insights and abilities.
Finally, I wanted to tell of all my excursions during that time -- my trip around the Earth in the
dropship, the long driving adventures in North America, my fleeting contact with the other islands
of humanity huddled around cybrid figures from the human past (the gathering in Israel and New
Palestine around the cybrid Jesus of Nazareth was a memorable group to visit), but primarily, when
I hear the brief silence on the 'scriber that took the place of these tales, I remember the reason
for my omission.
As I said before, I 'scribed these words in the Schr├╢dinger cat box orbiting Armaghast, while
awaiting the simultaneous emission of an isotopic particle and the activation of the particle
detector. When these two events coincided, the cyanide gas built into the static-energy field


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around the recycling equipment would be released.
Death would not be instantaneous, but near enough. While protesting earlier that I would take
my time in telling our story -- Aenea's and mine -- I realize now that there was some editing,
some attempt to get to the important elements before the particle decayed and the gas flowed.
I will not double-guess that decision now, except to say that the four years on Earth would be