"Ian Watson - Life in the Groove" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

Darien sketched a bow, drawing back his short green cape.

тАШHere it is, Hautarch. After much trial and error. After many tests ... It
appears to correspond perfectly with the celestial motions.тАЩ

The gaunt, one-eyed fellow tugged at his greying caprine beard as if
he had just remembered some missing compo-nent. He squinted, then
nodded, reassured. The other eye had been lost to a splash of boiling lead
during experiments at transmogrification on behalf of Our treasury. The
eye-patch was silver. Visitors to Our court sometimes took Fulque Darien at
first for a legendary mutant mage, one of whose eyes was organic and the
other crafted of precious metal.

His orrery consisted of several dozen little brass finger-cymbals
instantly identifiable as those employed by temple prostitutes during their
gyrations to the Spiral Spirit - as well as by less exalted dancing whores in
bordellos along the waterfront. We wondered which source of supply Our
court savant had used! Darien had erased any sacred or porno-graphic
motifs from those digital percussion discs, and superimposed on each the
astrological symbol of a particular world.

Each cymbal was held up in midair by a long, thin, jointed arm which
branched from the intricate clockwork of the base. A protective cage
enclosed the maze of gears and toothed cogs - the reticulations somewhat
blurred the details.

This clockwork was belt-driven so as to dampen vibrations and the
motive power occupied an adjoining cage mounted above an alcohol lamp.
When the alcohol was lit, a cunning series of little mirrors would focus the
lamplight upon the central luminary crystal rising on a slim glass spike in the
midst of the array of cymbals - representing our lustrous sapphire sun.

We pointed a stout, ring-clad finger at those mirrors.
 тАШA homage to Our signalling system, Fulque?тАЩ

The savant nodded eagerly, and his one-eyed gaze flicked towards
the nearby window as if to underscore this subtlety.

Way beyond Our beloved city of Majiriche, hugging both banks of the
million-mile river here in the Forever Valley, far beyond the agricultural
levels and the forests rising above those, Mount Sinister continued soaring
upwards towards its peak at a steady inclination of forty-five degrees.
Above the treeline the slope became snowclad. Above the cloud-line,
where the air was so thin, it was stark. Hardly indented by any cols or
gullies, the massif cut an almost perfectly straight line through the sky,
except where intervening cumulus smudged the view.

Up there on the summit-ridge shone the visual pinpricks of a couple
of mirrors - seemingly minuscule yet actually quite sizeable.