"John C. Wright - Orphans of Chaos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wright John C)

moss grew on them, and no sunlight ever seemed to warm them.
Vanity said that Arthur's Table clearly could not be in the for-est, because
there were no trees there. A forest, by definition (Vanity would exclaim) was
a place full of trees, wasn't it?
So (she would conclude triumphantly), there was no South-ern boundary,
provided we all agreed that there was none. What other people said amongst
themselves was their own affair.
Colin would ask sarcastically, "And when they send Mr. Glum and his savage dog
to hunt us down and maul us, does it then, at some point, become our affair?"
Vanity would roll her eyes and say, "If the dog mauls us on this side of the
boundary, we could still say he was on the other side, couldn't we? Things
like boundaries don't exist if you don't see them when you look for them, do
they?"
"And I guess dog fangs don't exist if you don't feel it when your arm gets
ripped off, right?"
"Exactly! Suppose the dog only thought he mauled us, but we did not see him
nor feel him when he came to attack us! How do you know the dog hadn't just
dreamed or imagined he attacked us? We could agree he hadn't done it, couldn't
we? We could even agree the dog had agreed not to hunt us!"
Colin would respond with something like, "Why bother ar-guing with me? Why
don't you just agree that I agree, so that, in your world, I have?"
Vanity would rejoin, "Because I prefer to agree that you ar-gued and you lost,
as anyone who heard the dumb things you say would agree."
Colin was not one to give up easily. "If you merely dreamed you had found a
secret way out of here, that would not let you walk through a solid stone
wall, would it?"
"Of course not. But no one knows which walls are solid and which are hollow
because no one can see the inside of the solid ones, can they? The ones you
can see inside aren't hollow, are they? No one else has any proof one way or
another."
Vanity's argument was as incomprehensible as Quentin's, and as brief (when
pared down) as Victor's. Apparently as long as she, Vanity, in her solipsistic
purity, did not believe the Southern boundary existed, then, for all practical
purposes, it would not. 6.
Vanity was short, redheaded, with a dusting of freckles on her cheeks. Her
eyes were the most enormous emerald, and they sparkled. She had a little
upturned snub nose I always envied just a bit. She was fair skinned and always
wore a straw skim-mer to keep the sun off her face.
With her lips so pale a rose color, and her eyebrows so light, I always
thought she looked like a statue of fine brass, held in a furnace of flame so
hot as to be invisible, so that she seemed to glow. Even when frowning, she
seemed to be smiling.
She was curvy and she took wry amusement at the fact that the boys, the male
teachers, even Mr. Glum, could have their gazes magnetized by her when she
walked by.
I always drought Vanity was a little sweet on Colin, because she yelled at him
and called him names. In me romances I read, that was a sure sign of growing
affection.
As I grew older, I noticed how carefully she noticed every-ming Quentin did,
Quentin the quiet one, and I realized she doted on him. And I began to realize