"G. David Nordley - The Forest Between the Worlds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nordley G. David)

manual controls. A com patch was generally deemed too unobtrusive for the Forest People to
understand as technology, as long as you didn’t let them touch it or use it in their presence. His matched
his skin color so well that he could barely discern its circular outline. "Leaving the com patch behind is
going a bit far, isn’t it?"

"Tell me about it! Sharada talked Uma Weiss into keeping technology out of the forest. Uma made an
exception for com patches, but Sharada doesn’t like even that. Look, com patches record everything, so
I think tech transfer is a smoke screen–she just hates people looking over her shoulder up there."

"How does she record her data?"

"She dictates it when she gets back to a stand-alone system, then puts out an edited report."

He looked at the darkening band of green between the worlds. While the interforest wasn’t particularly
dense, there was a lot of it and, he recalled, some vines were actually conductive. "Maybe she’s shielded
by the vines."

Jones shook her head. "I’ve never had any problem. I think she just wants to have her ducks in order
without back-seat drivers while she fights the battle over how intelligent they are."

Akil sighed. "I see. I’ll check it out." It made sense. In addition to technological hygiene, leaving the patch
behind would help preserve Fina’s data monopoly.

He got up, stretched, and swung his legs off the hammock. The curly "grass" smelled vaguely like ginger
as it squished beneath his bare toes. He glanced at his shorts hanging on the hammock support and
shrugged. The heat led the ground staff to be very casual around the complex, for comfort. Well, he’d
held out for two standard days to the likely, though politely unstated, amusement of everyone here. To
hell with it. He smiled at himself; talk about going native.

He dug his toes into the turf and pushed off, remembering to lean well forward to minimize his air
resistance and maximize his traction. People told him it got to be automatic in a few standard days, but it
was still very artificial for him, fresh from the one gravity of the star base. It felt okay as long as he
concentrated and didn’t have to react.

Two modest gliding strides took him across the compound’s central area to Dr. Fina’s dome. Like all the
others, it looked like one of the three-meter ramshackle nests of sticks constructed by the pseudosimians.
But there was a modern door set back in the shadow of the semicircular opening, and the huts came
equipped with all modern conveniences. Not too surprisingly, the door didn’t open as he approached.

"Open," he said anyway. It didn’t.

Akil shrugged. She could, of course, be sleeping. Akil pursed his lips and ran a hand through his curly,
jet-black hair. One didn’t violate a colleague’s privacy lightly.

"Jones? Are you copying this?"

"Yeah. She could be in there screwing that amber-furred Forest Person with the black ear tips."

"Screwing? Do you really think anything, uh, vaginal is involved?" The Forest People had only one area
of anatomical resemblance to people, but that was a prominently displayed embarrassment. He