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

Unpredictably, every century or so, hordes of leeming-rats would
burst forth as if from nowhere and rampage - aye, they would flood in a
snarling, devouring, copulating, blind tide - through kingdom after khanate
after republik. It was as though the rats reproduced apace somewhere
within the fabric of the mountains themselves, perhaps engendered within a
vast rock-eating queen. This devastating tide might flow for ten thousand
leagues till finally it piled up upon itself from sheer excess of bodies, which
would block the Valley, the vermin now devouring one another.

Those mountain mirrors could give early warning of such a flood, if it
began sufficiently far away. The wealth and populace of Our Hautarchy
could be transported up to the forested slopes where the leeming-rats
never ventured.

Already the Silver Emperor and the Hegemon were eagerly breeding
suitable slaves to staff mountain mirrors of their own, so as to communicate
with lands beyond.

Eventually, mirror messages might pass all the way from the fabled
centre of our world out to the ultimum circum within mere days.
 Thanks to past heroes of exploration we knew rather more of the
circum than of the centre. That final, vastest, outer-most stretch of Valley
led around in a perfect circle rather than a spiral. Reportedly it was utterly
barren and dry, for it lay beyond the first tricklings of the rain-fed stream
which presently became the million-mile river.

We tapped Our nose. тАШWe imagined you might use golden Oricks to
represent the worlds rather than those finger-cymbals of whores. We think
we even mentioned something of the sort.тАЩ

тАШThen I should have been obliged to erase your royal countenance,
Hautarch! Besides, if the treasury cannot afford to support a simple test of
my molekular theory . . .тАЩ

We glared at him.

тАШLight the flame,тАЩ We ordered. тАШWarm the rat. Let the orrery rotate.тАЩ

And so he did; and so it did.

In elegant complexity, the sixty-eight miniature worlds swung around
their orbits. Amidst the cavalcade, We admired the cymbal marked with the
antlered chevron which symbolised our own world of the Forever Valley.

тАШDo you suppose,тАЩ We enquired idly, тАШthat valleys similar to ours exist
on all the other worlds too?тАЩ

As that chevroned cymbal turned, We caught sight of its rearside,
where the tip of the thin arm was soldered. Around that little blob of joining
alloy, Darien had engraved a query mark inscribed in the old script.