"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Without End" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

Wisconsin in the summer, sitting on the Union Terrace, soaking up the rays and
pretending to study. Only he wasn't even pretending, he was arguing basic
freshman philosophy: if a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does
it
make a sound? Geneva had been passing at the time -- all legs and tan and too
big glasses on a too small nose.

Of course, she said, because it makes a disturbance and the disturbance makes
a
wave, and that wave is sound.

He didn't remember what he said in response. Something intriguing enough to
make
her sit and argue until the sunset turned the lake golden, and the mosquitos
had
driven the other students away.

From that moment on, he and Geneva always talked that way. The philosophy of
physics. The physics of philosophy. He got the education without the equations
and she, she felt free enough to explore the imaginative side of her science--
the tiny particles no one could see, the unified theories, the strings binding
the universe.

There's something out there, Dylan, she would say, and it's more than we are.

He knew that, as he held her papers, in her sunlit office just past their den.
In her crabbed writing, on those dot-matrix computer sheets, was the secret to
something.

If he could touch that, he could touch her. And if he could touch her, he
might
be able to hold her.

Forever.

The campus bar was full of people impossibly young. Dylan grabbed his frosty
mug
of beer and sat across from Ross, watching the people intermingle. A different
university, a different time. Now the students wore their hair short, and the
professors wore theirs long. Dylan sipped, let the foam catch him full on his
upper lip, and let the sound of co-mingled voices and too loud music wash over
him.

"I worry about you," Ross said. His beer was dark and warm. Its color matched
the tweed blend of his blazer. "You've locked yourself up in that house, and
haven't gone anywhere in weeks. You don't have to get her papers in order
before
the end of the term, Dylan. The department just wants them on file."

Dylan shook his head. He wasn't always working. Sometimes he wandered from