"Walter Jon Williams - Surfacing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

Notches, and were commenting on it. Furthermore, he knew, A9140 probably was a verb form having to
do with hearing—the Dwellers had a lot of them. “I/You hear the shrill sounds from above” might do as
a working translation, and although he had no idea how to translate C22, he suspected it was a comment
on the sounds. In a fever, Anthony began to work. As he bent over his keys he heard, through water and
bone, the sound of Two Notches singing.


The Milky Way was a dim watercolor wash overhead. An odd twilight hung over Las Madres, a near-
darkness that marked the hours when only the dwarf star was in the sky, providing little visible light but

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 Surfacing

still pouring out X-rays. Cabo Santa Pola lay in a bright glowing crescent across the boat’s path. Music
drifted from a waterfront tavern, providing a counterpoint to the Deep Dweller speech that still rang in
Anthony’s head. A familiar figure waited on the dock, standing beneath the yellow lamp that marked
Anthony’s slip. Anthony waved and throttled the boat back.

A good day. Even after the yellow sun had set, Anthony still felt in a sunny mood. A9140 had been
codified as “listen(H),” meaning listen solely in the sense of listening to a sound that originated from far
outside the Dwellers’ normal sphere—from outside their entire universe, in fact, which spoke volumes
for the way the Dwellers saw themselves in relation to their world. They knew something else was up
there, and their speech could make careful distinction between the world they knew and could perceive
directly and the one they didn’t. C22 was a descriptive term involving patterning: the Dwellers realized
that the cetacean speech they’d been hearing wasn’t simply random. Which spoke rather well for their
cognition.

Anthony turned the boat and backed into the slip. Nick Kanellopoulos, whom the humpbacks called The
One Who Chases Bad-Tasting Fish, took the sternline that Anthony threw him and tied it expertly to a
cleat. Anthony shut off the engines, took a bowline, and hopped to the dock. He bent over the cleat and
made his knot.

“You’ve gotta stop beating up my customers, Anthony,” Nick said.

Anthony said nothing.

“You even send your damn whales to harass me.”

Anthony jumped back into the boat and stepped into the cabin for a small canvas bag that held his gear
and the data cubes containing the Dweller’s conversation. When he stepped back out of the cabin, he
saw Nick standing on one foot, the other poised to step into the boat. Anthony gave Nick a look and
Nick pulled his foot back. Anthony smiled. He didn’t like people on his boat.

“Dinner?” he asked.

Nick gazed at him. A muscle moved in the man’s cheek. He was dapper, olive-skinned, about a century
old, the second-youngest human on the planet. He looked in his late teens. He wore a personal falkner
generator on his belt that protected him from the dwarf’s X-rays.

“Dinner. Fine.” His brown eyes were concerned. “You look like hell, Anthony.”