"Lee Killough - Symphony for a Lost Traveler" - читать интересную книгу автора (Killough Lee)

guests, milling together wearing their power as easily and elegantly as their formal clothing, chatting,
seemingly unaware or uncaring that they did so in the center of a lunar crater. Light from hidden spotlights
flooded the crater. No Earth or Sun shone in the sky, however. The jagged teeth of the ringwall framed a
breath-taking vista of stars alone, infinitely vast and far, yet so brilliant that each distant sun-- which one
warmed the world of the golden-feathered people?-- looked close enough for Cimela to reach up and
pluck.
She sat at the head table beside Ashendene, completely unable to distinguish what she ate. Instead
Cimela stared up at the glorious blaze overhead and wondered how the guests could ignore it for shop
talk and gossip. "Don't they ever look up?" she whispered to Ashendene.
"Perhaps after tonight they will." Grasping the edge of the table, he pulled himself upright. "Ladies and
gentlemen!" He waited while the roar of conversation died away. When only the occasional clink of a
dessert spoon against glass remained, he went on. "I want to thank you all for coming."
As he spoke, Cimela noticed that a square in the center of the floor dropped and slid aside.
"I hope you've enjoyed the food and wine. In a few minutes the Celestial Village Symphony Orchestra
will present the new work by Cimela Bediako that I promised you."
"Before that, however, let me relieve your curiosity about the business proposal I used to entice you
here. In a word, I am offering you the stars."
Cimela saw several people start to frown, but before they could complete the expression the air
swirled above the circle of tables. It solidified into a holo projection of the aliens' battered ship, a blunt
cigar shape wrapped in a scaffold-like spiral. Brows arched around the tables, then dipped again
speculatively as the guests recognized the strange craft's aged appearance. The eyes widened when
Ashendene explained what the ship was and how and where it had been found. Then the ship dissolved
and in its place a holo of the alien appeared, just as Cimela had first seen it: a pivoting outline, rapidly
filling with detail, texture, and color. A sigh of indrawn breath swept the circle.
"We have learned to duplicate the drive," Ashendene said. "Star travel is now possible in flights of
weeks and months instead of enduring for generations. All we need is a company to build the ships."
The physics behind the drive and the talk about bent space did not interest Cimela. The expressions
around the tables did, and she bit her lip. She had seen closed faces like those before... on critics who
decided even before the conductor raised his baton that her work could not possibly contain real artistic
merit, only novelty, gimmickry. These people had no interest in investing money to build star ships.
"...opportunity to establish trade," Ashendene was saying now. "If we'll use this drive, the universe and
whatever profit may lie out there are ours. And now, refill your wine glasses and prepare for pleasure."
The alien holo dissolved. "I present the Celestial Village Symphony Orchestra playing the most beautiful
and talented Cimela Bediako's The Lost Traveler." He dropped back into his chair.
Sometime during his speech the orchestra had slipped into its place at the end of the room. Cimela
laced her fingers tightly in her lap, her heart thundering like kettledrums, and nodded at Wu Chien.
After the first few bars, however, she forgot her nervousness, and even Ashendene and his guests.
Nothing existed but the music. It soared, the main melody carried by a descant recorder, samisen, and
harp. Other strings, the brass, and woodwinds sang behind them, playing complementary nucleotide
sequences. And in the center of the tables the computer projected the visual track: golden-feathered
aliens with faceted opal eyes, stretching upward or striding along on their powerful legs, circling and
embracing in a minuet-like dance, all against the backdrop of moonscape and starfields.
Cimela closed her eyes and let the sound possess her, reverberate through her bones and blood,
hypnotic. How foolish people were to think that they created music, she mused. Nature did it first, and
better, in the voices of wind and water and animals, and even in the very substance of what made all life
what it was. The aliens might come from a different sun and a different sea, but in the very center of them
their cells sang a song not that different from those of the trees, insects, and men of Earth.
When the music stopped, such absolute silence filled the dome that Cimela heard the sigh of breathing
and the beat of her own heart. She opened her eyes hesitantly to find every guest sitting blinking at the
empty air in the circle. She swung around to meet Wu Chien's eyes, stomach plunging. Oh. no! They