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

glorified babysitter.But Isaah was adamant."Do I have to wear it?""Remember
what happened to your mother," he would say.And that was that.Rathere shrugged
and let the tendrils wrap themselves into her hair. The voicein her ears
cautioned her incessantly about sunburn, and it strictly forbadeseveral
classes of recreational drugs, but all in all it wasn't bad company.
Itcertainly knew a lot."How long would it take, creeping forward in
micrometers?" Rathere asked."How long would what take?" Even with their
intimate connection, the AI couldnot read her mind. It was still working on
that."To get all the way to the Northern Range. Probably a million years?"
sheventured.The starship, for whom a single second was a 16-teraflop reverie,
spent endlessminutes of every day accessing the planetary library. Rathere's
questions camein packs, herds, stampedes.No one knew how the lithomorphs
reproduced, but it was guessed that they bred inthe abysmal caves of the
Northern Range."At least a hundred thousand years," the AI said."Such a long
journey .... What would it look like?"The AI delved into its package of
pedagogical visualization software, appliedits tremendous processing power
(sufficient for the occult mathematics ofastrogation), and rendered the
spectacles of that long, slow trip. AcrossRathere's vision it accelerated
passing days and wheeling stars until they wereinvisible flickers. It hummed
the subliminal pulse of seasonal change andpainted the sprightly jitter of
rivers changing course, the slow but visibledance of mountainous
cousins."Yes," Rathere said softly, her voice turned breathy. The AI savored
thedilation of her pupils, the spiderwebs of red blossoming on her cheeks.
Then itpeered again into the vision it had created, trying to learn what rules
of mindand physiology connected the scintillating images with the girl's
reaction."They aren't really slow," Rathere murmured. "The world is just so
fast .... "Isaah, Rathere's father, looked out upon the statues of
Petraveil.Their giant forms crowded the town square. They dotted the high
volcanicmountain overlooking the city. They bathed in the rivers that surged
across theblack equatorial plains, staining the waters downstream with rusted
metalcolors.The first time he had come here, years before, Isaah had noticed
that in theshort and sudden afternoon rains, the tears shed from their eyes
carried a blackgrime that sparkled with colored whorls when the sun
returned.They were, it had been determined a few decades before, very much
alive.Humanity had carefully studied the fantastically slow creatures
sincediscovering their glacial, purposeful, perhaps even intelligent
animation.Mounted next to each lithomorph was a plaque that played timeseries
of the lastforty years: a dozen steps, a turn of the head as another of its
kind passed, afew words in their geologically deliberate gestural
language.Most of the creatures' bodies were hidden underground, their secrets
teased outwith deep radar and gravitic density imaging. The visibleportion was
a kind ofeye-stalk, cutting the surface like the dorsal fin of a dolphin
breaking intothe air.Isaah was here to steal their stories. He was a
scoop."How long until we leave here?" Rathere asked."That's for your father to
decide," the AI answered."But when will he decide?""When the right scoop
comes.""When will that come?"This sort of mildly recursive loop had once
frustrated the AI's conversationalpackages. Rathere's speech patterns were
those of a child younger than heryears, the result of her life since her
mother's disappearance: traveling amongobscure, Outward worlds with only her
taciturn father and the AI for company.Rathere never formulated what she