"Walter Jon Williams - Surfacing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

Anthony felt a thing twist in his mind. Something that, in its own time, would lead to anger.

The boat had been out here, both in the warm current and then in the cold, for three days. Each more
unsatisfactory than the last.

The growing swell was being driven toward land by a storm that was breaking up fifty miles out to sea:
the remnants of the storm itself would arrive by midnight and make things even more unpleasant. Spray
feathered across the tops of the waves. The day was growing cold.

Spindrift pattered across AnthonyтАЩs shoulders. He ignored it, concentrated instead on the long, grating
harmonic moan picked up by the microphones his boat dangled into the chill current. The moan ended
on a series of clicks and trailed off. Anthony tapped his computer deck. A resolution appeared on the
screen. Anthony shaded his eyes from the pale sun and looked at it.

Anthony gazed stonily at the translation tree. тАЬI am rising toward and thinking hungrily about the
slippery-tasting coordinatesтАЭ actually made the most objective sense, but the righthand branch of the tree
was the most literal and most of what Anthony suspected was context had been lost. тАЬI and the oily
current are in a state of motion toward one anotherтАЭ was perhaps more literal, but тАЬWe (the oily deep
and I) are in a cold state of mindтАЭ was perhaps equally valid.




file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Williams,%20Walter%20Jon%20-%20Surfacing%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (2 of 58)22-12-2006 12:11:31
 Surfacing




1




The boat gave a corkscrew lurch, dropped down the face of a swell, came to an abrupt halt at the end of
its drogue. Water slapped against the stern. A mounting screw, come loose from a bracket on the bridge,
fell and danced brightly across the deck.

The screw and the deck are in a state of relative motion, Anthony thought. The screw and the deck are in
a motion state of mind.

Wrong, he thought, there is no Other in the DwellersтАЩ speech.

We, I and the screw and the deck, are feeling cold.

We, I and the Dweller below, are in a state of mutual incomprehension.

A bad day, Anthony thought.

Inchoate anger burned deep inside him.