"Kate Wilhelm - Day Of The Sharks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

by now."

The whale continues to swim in great circles out in the bay, close in, then
farther out again. Bill begins to tell Gary about the financial problems his
company has encountered, through no fault of their own. Gary promises nothing.
He will study the financial statements, the local restrictions, and so on.
Bill understands. He lays his hand on Gary's arm and assures him that he
understands.

Veronica doesn't come out for lunch, and after the others eat, Shar and Bill
withdraw to nap. Gary puts on his trunks and swims in the pool, then stretches
out under a cluster of palm trees, something _Reclinatus_, Bill said. You can
transplant full-grown palm trees, instant garden, Gary thinks, listening to
the wind in the fronds, a soothing rainlike sound. You dredge up the bay
bottom, smooth it out, cover it with a carpet of sod, plants trees, flowers,
shrubs, plant a house, plant people. Instant paradise. And there are no
insects in the ground. Barren, pseudodirt. Not real.

Veronica said, after her hospitalization, "Sometimes I wonder, if I reach out
to touch you when you're not looking, not thinking about me, not concentrating
on being you, will my hand go through you?"

"Meaning?"

"I don't know. Nothing you do is real. You work with money -- bits of paper
that have no meaning. You don't even see the money. It isn't real, just
figures on paper, symbols in the computer. You don't make anything, or fix
anything. After you finish for the day, does the office lose its shape, melt
down to nothing until you get back and give it a pseudoreality again?"

"Veronica! For heaven's sake!" He reached for her and she drew away sharply,
in recoil almost.

"No! That isn't real either. A touch, a kiss, a fuck. Pseudoreal."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"You can tell if it's real. You can tell. If it's there years later. If you
can go to it and find it years later." Her voice became a whisper, her gaze on
something he could not see. "Money becomes figures on paper. Patients become
organs that become numbers in the computer. Pseudoreal."

After she is well again, they will separate. He has already decided. She is
young, pretty until she became ill. She will marry again, maybe even have
children. She wants children; he said later, after we're established, a little
money saved. Later. And he will find someone new, someone with gaiety in her
laugh, who isn't sick. Someone who will bring fun into his life again.

He dozes in the shade and awakens to find that the sun is burning his legs.
The distant throbbing has entered his head; it is his head, but there is