"John C. Wright - Golden Age 1 - The Golden Age" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wright John C)

And there was no sign of the white-haired man. Perhaps he had been a projection after all, or some
fiction, part of the art statement of the grove?
The flash and glamour of the transparent Advertisements did not block his view. The trees were
widely spaced, nor was there brush. And, unless the man had hidden behind the walking iceberg thing
looming above the grape trellises nearby, there was simply no place to hide.
Phaethon threw his hands before his face and gestured for his sense-filter to resume.
 Peace and silence crashed into place around him. It was not, perhaps, the perfect truth he saw. But
the groves were quiet now, and starlight and moonlight slanted through the strange silver-mirrored leaves,
and falling blossoms. A routine calculated how the scene would look (and sound and feel and smell) were
the disturbing objects not present. The representation was close to real, "Surface Dreaming" as it was
called. The machine intelligences creating the illusion, able to think a million times faster than a man, or a
billion, could cleverly and symmetrically account for all inconsistencies and cover up any unwanted
errors.
His ears still rang with echoes; his eyes were still dazzled by floating half shapes, colors reversed. He
could have waited for his ears to stop ringing naturally, or blinked his eyes clear. But he was impatient;
the man he sought was no doubt getting away. He merely signaled for his eyes to reset to perfect night
adaptation, for his ears to restore.
Phaethon started to jog toward the grape trellises where...
The iceberg thing was gone. Phaethon saw nothing.
Iceberg? Phaethon's augmented memory could re-create an exact image of what he had-seen. It had
loomed, gigantic, over the area, moving on myriad legs of semiliquid, which solidified, elephantine, then
liquefied again as the creature drifted forward. Likewise, it had had a dozen arms or tentacles of ice
flowing and freezing around objects in the area, careful not to disturb the trees, but holding objects (eyes?
remote sensors?) near the garden plants, as if to study them from every angle.
It was, of course, a member of the Tritonic Neuroform Composition School, the so-called
Neptunians. The technology of their nerve-cell surface allowed them thought-speeds approaching that of
some of the slower Sophotechs; but the crystals of the cell surface exhibited their peculiar
electrosuperconductive and micropolymorphetic characteristics only under the near-absolute-zero
temperatures and near-metallic-hydrogen-forming pressures of the Neptunian atmosphere. The icy body
Phaethon had seen was armor -- living, shape-changing armor, but armor nonetheless, and a triumph of
molecular and submolecular technology. That armor allowed the Neptunian brain substances inside to
withstand the unbearable heat and (relative to Neptune) near-vacuum conditions of the earthly
atmosphere.
That he had programmed his sense-filter to block images of Advertisements or raucous music,
Phaethon could understand. But he did not remember (and his memory was photographically perfect)
ordering the filter to block views of Neptunians. Merely that one of that strange, remote school, the most
distant members of the Golden Oecumene, should come physically to Earth was cause for wonder and
comment.
Why in the world would Phaethon have ordered himself not to see, or to avoid remembering seeing,
such a being? It was true that Neptunians were thought of as reckless, innovative, untrustworthy, and
yet...
Phaethon took a moment to examine his sense-filter's censor. Only three of the command lines struck
him as odd. Very odd. One was meant to prevent him seeing the Cerebelline Green-Mother's
ecoperformance being held on Channels 12-20 at Destiny Lake. The second was to edit out sights and
references to the visiting Neptunian legates. A third was meant to distract him from studying astronomical
reports or information concerning a recent disaster in Mercurial space, brought on by solar prominences
and irregularities of unusual violence.
Why? What was the connection?
And why had he done this to himself? And then ordered himself to forget that he had done it?
Phaethon adjusted his sense-filter to allow himself to see the Neptunian (without hearing the music or