"Sheri S. Tepper - The Companions" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

spent days at a time forgetting their purpose. The seasons were marked by shifts of
color, by drifts of wind, by smells and shapes and a certain nostalgic tenderness that
came and went, like a memory of lost delight. Time, on Moss, was a meaningless
measurement of nothing much.

PPI was abetted in its lethargy. Exploration of the world Jungle, in this same system, had
ended in a disaster dire enough to demonstrate that impatience might be a mistake. If
one hurried things, one might end up as those poor PPI fellows had on Jungle, where
both men and reputations had been lost and nothing had been discovered as
compensation. PPI could not explain its failure. Back on Earth, those in command, who
had no idea what a jungle world was like, or indeed what any primitive world was like,
decided that PPI had been overeager, had pressed too far, too quickly. ESC, responsible
for housing and protecting the team on Jungle, had allowed too much liberty, too
quickly. Do not make this same mistake, they said, on Moss.

Obediently, ESC people on Moss considered, reconsidered, weighed, and reweighed,
becoming more eremitic with each day that passed. Gratefully, PPI personnel on Moss
added Authorized Dawdle to the snail-creep imposed by the planet itself. Dazedly they
wandered and dreamed and fell into intimacy with the sounds and smells and visions of
the place. Finally, after years of this, the Moss folk rewarded them all by emerging from
the shadows onto the meadows along the shore, and dancing there in patterns of
sequined flames. Every off-planet person on Moss saw them. Every recorder turned
upon them recorded them. Every person saw the curved bodies of the Mossen, as they
were subsequently dubbed, aflutter in a bonfire of motion, gliding and glittering in a
constant murmur of musical babble that might have been speech. If they spoke.

Who knew if they spoke? Did they have powers of perception? Did they see their
visitors? They showed no sign of it except when one man or another wanted a closer
view and attempted to approach. As anyone crossed the invisible line, the Mossen
vanished, floating upward in a spasm of light, the carpet of their dancing floor raised
beneath them, veiling them from below. Moss itself was a wonder, a marvel beyond
comprehension. The Mossen who inhabited it remained a mystery, an enigma that
battled understanding.

The ESC island was just offshore of the meadow where the Mossen danced. The
compound of PPI lay on the shore beside that meadow. The compound contained a
number of individual houses-cum-workstations gathered around the commissary hall,
where meals were prepared and meetings held. The outsides of the buildings had been
mossened with green and yellow, red and gray within a day of their erection, though the
insides, inexplicably, remained unfestooned. The largest building served as a
headquarters, and it was there that Duras Drom, the mission chief, sat at his console,
sifting his records, searching for something, anything to help him out of his dilemma.

What he found only complicated it.

"When did this report from ESC come in, the one about the ships?"

His lieutenant gave him a thoughtful look as though from a distance of some miles.
"What report?"