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

real reason for Mr. Wright coming west to the second Taliesin. There were ten or twelve of the
apprentices in the drafting room, all standing around -- none working now that the Old Architect
was no longer around to suggest projects -- and I told them that Aenea would like us to gather in
the music pavilion. None protested. None grumbled or made any comment about a sixteen-year-old
telling ninety of her elders to come together in the middle of a workday. If anything, the
apprentices looked relieved to hear that she was back and taking charge.
From the drafting room I went to the library where I had spent so many happy hours and then
checked the conference room, lit only by four glowing panels in the floor, and announced the
meeting to the people I found in both places. Then I jogged down the concrete path under the
covered walkway of desert masonry and peered in the cabaret theater where the Old Architect had
loved to show movies on Saturday nights. This place had always tickled me -- its thick stone walls
and roof, the long descending space with plywood benches covered with red cushions, the well-worn
red carpet on the floor, and the many hundreds of white Christmas lights running back and forth on
the ceiling. When we first arrived, Aenea and I were amazed to find that the Old Architect
demanded that his apprentices and their families "dress for dinner" on Saturdays -- ancient
tuxedoes and black ties, of the sort one sees in the oldest history holos. The women wore strange
dresses out of antiquity. Mr. Wright provided the formal clothes for those who failed to bring
them in their flight to Earth through Time Tombs or farcaster.
That first Saturday, Aenea had shown up dressed in a tuxedo, shirt, and black tie rather than
one of the dresses provided. When I first saw the Old Architect's shocked expression, I was sure
that he was going to throw us out of the Fellowship and make us eke out a living in the desert,
but then the old face creased into a smile and within seconds he was laughing. He never asked


file:///F|/rah/Dan%20Simmons/Simmons,%20Dan...-%2004%20-%20The%20Rise%20of%20Endymion.txt (17 of 319) [1/15/03 6:08:23 PM]
 file:///F|/rah/Dan%20Simmons/Simmons,%20Dan%20-%2004%20-%20The%20Rise%20of%20Endymion.txt

Aenea to dress in anything else. After the formal Saturday dinners, we would either have a group
musical event or assemble in the cabaret theater for a movie -- one of the ancient, celluloid
kinds that had to be projected by a machine. It was rather like learning to enjoy cave art.
Both Aenea and I loved the films he chose -- ancient twentieth-century flat things, many in
black and white -- and for some reason that he never explained, Mr. Wright preferred to watch them
with the "sound track," optical jiggles and wiggles, visible on the screen. Actually, we'd watched
films there for a year before one of the other apprentices told us that they had been made to be
watched without the sound track visible.
Today the cabaret theater was empty, the Christmas lights dark. I jogged on, moving from room
to room, building to building, rounding up apprentices, workers, and family members until I met A.
Bettik by the fountain and we joined the others in the large music pavilion.
The pavilion was a large space, with a broad stage and six rows of eighteen upholstered seats
in each row. The walls were of redwood painted Cherokee Red (the Old Architect's favorite color)
and the usual thick desert masonry. A grand piano and a few potted plants were the only things on
the red-carpeted stage. Overhead, stretched tight above a gridwork of wood and steel ribs, was the
usual white canvas. Aenea had once told me that after the death of the first Mr. Wright, plastic
had taken the place of canvas to relieve the necessity of replacing canvas every couple of years.
But upon this Mr. Wright's return, the plastic was ripped out -- as was the glass above the main
drafting room -- so that pure light through white canvas would be the rule once again. A. Bettik
and I stood near the rear of the music pavilion as the murmuring apprentices and other workers
took their seats, some of the construction workers standing on the aisle steps or at the back with
the android and me, as if worried about tracking mud and dust onto the rich carpet and upholstery.
When Aenea entered through the side curtains and jumped to the stage, all the conversation