"Scott Westerfield - The Movements Of Her Eyes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westerfeld Scott)

SCOTT WESTERFELD THE MOVEMENTS OF HER EYESIT STARTED ON
THAT frozen world, among the stone figures in their almostsuspended
animation.Through her eyes, the irises two salmon moons under luminous white
brows, likefissures in the world of rules, of logic. The starship's mind
watched throughthe prism of their wonder, and began to make its change.She
peered at the statue for a solid, unblinking minute. Protesting tearsgathered
to blur her vision, but Rathere's gaze did not waver. Another minute,and a tic
tugged at one eye, taking up the steady rhythm of her heartbeat.She kept
watching."Ha!" she finally proclaimed. "I saw it move.""Where?" asked a voice
in her head, unconvinced.Rathere rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands,
mouth open, awestruck bythe shooting red stars behind her eyelids. Her blinks
made up now for the lostminutes, and she squinted at the dusty town
square."His foot," she announced, "it moved. But maybe...only a
centimeter."The voice made an intimate sound, a soft sigh beside Rathere's ear
that did notquite reject her claim."Maybe just a millimeter," Rathere offered.
A touch of unsure emphasis hoveredabout the last word; she wasn't used to tiny
units of measurement, though fromher father's work she understood light years
and metaparsecs well enough."In three minutes? Perhaps a micrometer," the
voice in her head suggested.Rathere rolled the word around in her mouth. In
response to her questioningexpression, software was invoked, as effortless as
reflex. Images appeared uponthe rough stones of the square: a meter-stick, a
hundredth of its length glowingbright red, a detail box showing that hundredth
with a hundredth of its lengthflashing, yet another detail box...completing
the six orders of magnitudebetween meter and micrometer. Next to the final
detail box a cross-section ofhuman hair floated for scale, as bloated and
gnarled as some blackly diseasedtree."That small?" she whispered. A slight
intake of breath, a softening of her eyes'focus, a measurable quantity of
adrenaline in her bloodstream were all noted.Indicators of her simple awe:
that a distance could be so small, a creature soslow."About half that,
actually," said the voice in her head."Well," Rathere murmured, leaning back
into the cool hem of shade along thestone wall, "I knew I saw it move."She
eyed the stone creature again, a look of triumph on her face.Woven into her
white tresses were black threads, filaments that moved throughher hair in a
slow deliberate dance, like the tendrils of some predator on anocean floor.
This restless skein was always seeking the best position to captureRathere's
subvocalized words, the movements of her eyes, the telltale secretionsof her
skin. Composed of exotic alloys and complex configurations of carbon,
thetendrils housed a native intellect that handled their motility
andself-maintenance. But a microwave link connected them to their
realintelligence: the AI core aboard Rathere's starship home.Two of the black
filaments wound their way into her ears, where they curled inintimate contact
with her tympanic membranes."The statues are always moving," the voice said to
her. "But very slowly."Then it reminded her to stick on another sunblock
patch.She was a very pale girl.EVEN HERE on Petraveil, Rathere's father
insisted that she wear the minder whenshe explored alone. The city was safe
enough, populated mostly by academics hereto study the glacially slow
indigenous lifeforms. The lithomorphs themselveswere incapable of posing a
threat, unless one stood still for a hundred years orso. And Rathere was, as
she put it, almost fifteen, near majority age back inthe Local Cluster. Even
harnessing the processing power of the starship's AI,the minder was a