"Terry Dowling - The Lagan Fishers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dowling Terry)

intended function all along. Misleading. Deceiving. Hiding the passengers. Working to let this happen
privately, secretly. Who could say?
He helped her become human.
It was hard to work in the hedges in the days that followed, so hard to chat and make small-talk knowing that
she was up in the house with the books and the sims, learning his world, learning to be human, eating and
drinking mechanically but unassisted now, if without evident pleasure, being imprinted. Becoming. The only
word for it.
They saw that he was distracted, took it as an allowable relapse by their MF recluse, the famous Tilby
Tiger. Becoming was an appropriate word for Sam too. Though he made himself work at doing and saying the
right things, remaining courteous and pleasant, it was like doing the compulsory Life Studies modules all over
again, all those mandatory realtime, facetime têtes and citizenship dialogues for getting along. Comfortable
handles for the myriad, net-blanded, online, PC global villagers. Words, words and words. Sam hated it but
managed.
He had Jeanie back in a way he hadn't expected. Like a flower moving with the sun or a weathervane
aligning with the wind, he just found himself responding to what was natural in his life. Kyrie was of this time,
this place, this moment, but with something of Jeanie, just as the old song had it. My Lagan Love indeed.
Sam cherished the old words anew, and sang them as he worked in the hedgerows below her window.
"Where Lagan stream sings lullaby
There blows a lily fair;
The twilight gleam is in her eye,
The night is on her hair.
And, like a love-sick lenanshee,
She hath my heart in thrall;
Nor life I owe, nor liberty,
For Love is lord of all.
And often when the beetle's horn
Hath lulled the eve to sleep,
I steal unto her shielding lorn
And thro' the dooring peep.
There on the cricket's singing stone
She spares the bog wood fire.
And hums in sad sweet undertone
The song of heart's desire."
But Sam remained the skeptic too, was determined not to become some one-eyed Love's Fool. Even as
he guided Kyrie, added more photos, ran the holos, he tried to fit this visitation into the science of lagan.
It was a cycle, a pendulum swing. One moment he'd be sitting with his alien maquette in her
window-shaded room, singleminded, determined, perversely searching for new traces of Jeanie. The next, he
was touring the online lagan sites-scanning everything from hard science briefs to the wildest theories,
desperately seeking anything that might give a clue.
There was so much material, mostly claims of the "I know someone who knows someone" variety, and
Sam was tempted to go the exophilia route and see the World Government muddying up the informational
waters, hiding the pearls of truth under the detritus.
Finally, inevitably, he went back to his bower-bird friend, brought up the subject during a morning tour of
the hedges.
"Howie, official findings aside, you ever hear of anything found alive in the lagan?"
"Apart from the lagan itself? Nothing above the microbial."
"But unofficial."
"Well, the rumors are endless. People keep claiming things; the UN keeps saying it's reckless exophilia.
And I tell myself, Sam, if something was found, how could they keep a lid on it? I mean, statistically, there'd
be so many visitations, passengers, whatever, word would get out."