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

At the moment those shone steadily. No signals were winking.

It had been one of the culminating triumphs of Our reign to mount
those messenger devices upon Mount Sinister, leftward bastion of Our
valley, and upon Mount Dexter, the rightward valley wall. My
great-grandfather had begun the breeding program to cultivate slaves with
barrel-chests and shaggy coats of hair who could breathe in such high
regions and avoid hypothermia. How unhappy such persons were in the
warmer, thicker atmosphere of the Valley when they descended even as far
as the tree-line to collect their supplies of meat and fish and oatcake, which
guaranteed their obedience!

Of course, Mounts Sinister and Dexter were one and the same in
reality, being the opposite sides of one another - a fact which Our common
people often found hard to visual-ise, despite the explanatory dances in the
temples of the Spiral Spirit.

Heroic river journeys in the age of Our elder ancestors - voyages of
three thousand, of ten thousand, of twenty thousand leagues - had
established the truth that the inaccessible Silver Empire over the other side
of Mount Sinister was also several thousand leagues downriver of us
beyond a hundred intervening khanates, republiks, demotopias, and
barrens - and that the selfsame Valley spiralled around the whole of our
world from the circum to the centre, its chevron cutting deep into the slate
of our planetary surface and thus raising to left and right that long dual
mountain.
 In mirror-code we now communicated with the Silver Empire on one
side, and with the Hegemony on the other - as well as trading diplomatically
with the upstream Fisher Kingdom and the downstream Sensualists.

The motive power of Fulque DarienтАЩs device - within that secondary
cage - was a sleek, tawny-furred leeming-rat.

That too was a clever homage.

Why else were those mirrors set up there on the moun-tains? Not
merely to exchange philosophical speculations or so that We could play
prolonged games of Tchak with the Silver Emperor remotely by mirror.

тАШWhen you light the alcohol flame, Hautarch, the cage floor heats,тАЩ
explained Darien. The blind rat runs into the little treadmill, and thus propels
the gears - swiftly or slowly, depending upon the height of the flame.тАЩ

We nodded appreciatively. A little hopper contained pel-lets of
oatcake to feed the ever-ravenous beast. A flask with suction-spigot, water.
A chute deposited its nuts of excre-ment in a tray beneath.

We were determined that this particular leeming-rat should enjoy
plentiful exercise, turning the arms of Our orrery.