"Tony Daniel - The Valley of the Gardens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniel Tony)

THE VALLEY OF THE GARDENS
TONY DANIEL



L
ike many writers of his generation, Tony Daniel first made an impres-sion in the field
with his short fiction. He made his first sale, to Asimov’s, in 1990, and followed it up
with a long string of well-received stories both there and in markets such as The
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Amazing, SF Age, Universe, and Full
Spectrum throughout the nineties, stories such as “The Robot’s Twilight
Companion,” “Grist,” “A Dry, Quiet War,” “The Careful Man Goes West,” “Sun
So Hot I Froze to Death,” “Prism Tree,” “Candle,” “Death of Reason,” “No Love
in All of Dwingeloo,” and many others, some of which were collected in The
Robot’s Twilight Compan-ion. “Grist” and “A Dry, Quiet War” in particular can be
seen as some of the finest stories done in shorter lengths in the New Space Opera.
His story “Life on the Moon” was a finalist for the Hugo Award in 1996, and won
the Asimov’s Science Fiction Readers’ Award poll. His first novel, Warpath, was
released simultaneously in America and England in 1993. In 1997, he published a
new novel, Earthling. In the first few years of the oughts, he has produced little
short fiction, but instead has been at work on a major science fiction trilogy,
containing some of the most extreme and inventive work to be seen in the New
Space Opera to date. The first volume of the trilogy, Metaplanetary, was published
in 2001; the second volume, Superluminal, appeared early in 2004.

In the violent and exotic tale that follows, he reaffirms the old wisdom that we
belong to the land as much as the land belongs to us—especially if the land in
question has been programmed with an intelligence and a pur-pose all its own.

****

For weeks, Mac “walked the fence.” It formed the border where his land topped the
mountainous ridge and sided the western slope where the Valley of the Gardens gave
way to the Extremadura, Cangarriga’s vast northern desert. To the unaided human
eye, the fence was made of stone, with pillars of rocks serving as posts every few
hundred feet. Within the pillars were steel posts set in concrete that communicated
with the jack-rock below. The fence ran deep into the substrate of the land—coded,
modified, recoded, and shored up with millennia of layered routine and
subroutine—so beyond Mac’s comprehension that he might as well call it
ensorceled. But, magic or not, the fence had to be fixed, and to fix a fence properly
you had to walk it, find the gaps, and fill them in.

And the gaps this season were wider than any he ever remembered. The desert
on the other side was encroaching, making inroads many feet long down his side of
the ridge, and spreading its wildness, its potential pesti-lence, with it. His own land
even on this high ground was tended ground. It might appear free, but that was
merely because the land needed to be let alone sometimes. This ridge had been a
vineyard before, and would be again someday. Now it was covered with broom
grass interspersed with clumps of sage and rosemary. Restoration planting—as
carefully planned as the straightest flower row.