"Michael Swanwick - Wild Minds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

"I don't know," she said in an anguished voice. "I simply don't know."

I could sense something significant occurring within myself, intuit some
emotional sea-change organizing itself deep on the unseen levelsтАФthe planners
building new concept-language, the shunts and blocks being rearranged. Of
course I had no way of knowing what it was. I hadn't been optimized. StillтАФ

"Can I walk you home?" I asked.

She looked at me for a long and silent second. "I live in Prague."

"Oh."

"We could go to your place, if it's not too far."

We took the hypermetro to Glasgow. Got off at the Queen Street Station and
walked up to my flat in Renfrew Street. We talked a little on the train, but Hellene
fell silent when we hit the street.

They don't like the old places, the new people, cluttered with seedy pubs and
street corner hang-outs, the niches where shabby men sit slumped over their
whisky in paper bags, the balconies from which old women watch over the street.
It unnerves them, this stench of accommodation and human dirt. It frightens them
that it works so well, when it so obviously shouldn't. "You're a Catholic," she
said.

She was looking at my icon, a molecular reproduction of Ad Reinhardt's "For

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Michael%20Swanwick%20-%20Wild%20Minds.htm (2 of 13) [12/30/2004 8:09:36 PM]
 Wild Minds by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, May 1998


T.M." It's one of his black paintings, his first, and modestly small. At first it
seems unvaryingly colorless; you have to stare at it for some time to see the
subtle differences in the black, the thick cross that quarters and dominates that
small lightless universe. He painted it for Thomas Merton, who was a monk.

My copy is a duplicate as exact as human technology can make it; more exact
than human perception can distinguish. I use it as a focus for meditation.
Opposite it is a Charles Rennie MacIntosh chair, high-backed. An original
because it was made to his directions. Sometimes I'll sit in the one and stare at the
other, thinking about distinctions, authenticity, and duplicity.

"You wouldn't need meditation if you were optimized."

"No. But the Church considers it a mortal sin, you see."

"The Church can't possibly approve of your attending orgies."

"Oh. Well. It's winked at." I shrugged. "As long as you go to confession before