"Bova, Ben - Orion 05 - Orion among the Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

"I wouldn't call it casual," I replied.
No response. The lights flickered around me, as if they were dancing in a sphere all around me, binding me in a web of blinking colorful flashes of energy.
"You haven't told me who you are," I said.
"You may call us the Old Ones."
"What does that mean?"
Again that tolerant sense of amusement, like a grandfather watching a baby's hesitant first steps.
"You will find out in due course," the voice said. "For now, we must travel deeper into the sea."
I got a sense of motion, acceleration, a tremendous rushing through the dark waters. The lights remained all around me. I could breathe. I seemed to be floating weightlessly, almost like an astronaut in orbit. In the dim flickering light I could see that my wounds were scabbing over. The bleeding had stopped completely and I felt a little stronger. All the while I was moving through the inky depths, speeding deeper and deeper, farther and farther from the shore.
At last I saw more lights approaching. They glowed and pulsated as if they were living, breathing creatures. Whole avenues of light opened up before my eyes, as if I were flying toward a vast city, swooping along a highway of lights that led to its magnificent heart.
"How do you feel?" the voice asked.
"Bewildered."
"I mean physically. Your wounds."
I flexed my arms, looked down at my legs. They were healing rapidly.
"Everything seems to be going along fine."
"Good. We are pleased."
"Tell me more about yourselves. What is this city of lights that we are approaching?"
"This is our home, Orion. The home of the Old Ones."
"May I see you?" I asked, sensing that these lights were merely sparks of energy.
"You may be unpleasantly surprised," the voice replied. "You may be repelled by our appearance."
"Then tell me what to expect."
"A reasonable approach to the problem." The voice hesitated, as if checking with others before answering my request. Then:
"Orion, your Creators have told you that space-time is an ocean, have they not?"
"The one called Aten has taunted me more than once about my linear perception of space-time," I answered.
"Yes, we can see that. Yet your linear perception is not entirely in error, Orion."
"There are currents in the ocean of space-time," I said.
"And there is a flow, a very definite flow. Time's arrow exists. Entropy exists. Even though we may move back and forth across the ocean of space-time, we still cannot hold back entropy. The continuum unravels a little whenever we move through space-time. The greater our move, the more disorder arises."
"But what has this to do with the way you look?" I asked.
"Time's arrow," the voice replied. "There are earlier times and later times. There is a point in space-time when your planet Earth is barren and lifeless. There is a point where the human race begins—"
"Built by the Creators and sent to destroy the Neanderthals so that Earth can be inhabited by the Creators' creatures."
"Who in turn, over the millennia, evolve into the Creators themselves."
"Yes. They created us and we created them."
"There is a point in the evolution of our kind," the voice said, "when we had not yet developed intelligence, when we were far simpler beings living in the seas of our original world."
"Lunga is not your original world?"
"Oh, no. Not at all."
"Then where did you originate?"
I sensed a hesitation. "Does it matter? Suffice to say that once we were far simpler beings than we are now."
"Simpler beings," I said, beginning to understand what he was hinting at, "with tentacles?"
"Yes."
"And claws that can crack armor?"
"Do you think you are prepared to see us?"
I thought of those things in the swamp, with their clutching tentacles and snapping claws and dozens of beady eyes.
I took a breath and said shakily, "Yes, I'm ready."
"Very well."
The sea around me brightened and I saw that I was surrounded by dozens of writhing tentacled creatures. They were huge, immense, like gigantic pulsating jellyfish with long wriggling tentacles and lipless round mouths that opened and closed, opened and closed, coming nearer and nearer to me. My skin crawled and I felt panic rising inside me, surrounded by these enormous engulfing undulating horrors pressing closer and closer, tentacles reaching out for me, mouths pulsating....
"Can you rise above your fears, Orion?"
I wanted to scream. Those enormous gaping mouths, like suckers big enough to swallow me whole, they seemed to be bearing down upon me, coming to devour me, coming to grasp me in those powerful tentacles and stuff me into one of those gaping maws. I could feel their digestive fluids burning into my flesh. I felt smothered, suffocating.
"Can you see beyond your terror, Orion? Can you look upon us as we truly are?"
I realized my eyes were squeezed shut, my fists pressed so hard against my temples I thought my skull would burst. They saved you! I raged at myself. They're healing your wounds. They are intelligent beings. Go beyond their appearance; look at them as they see themselves.
Shaking with dread, I opened my eyes and forced myself to look at them again. They hovered all around me, huge, engulfing. I took a deep, shuddering breath. They came no closer, floating silently in the deep waters. Yet they were so enormous that they filled my vision wherever I looked. There was no escaping them. I fought against the panic that surged through me, deliberately forced my heart to slow its terrified beat, calmed my breathing to something close to normal.
I stared at them for long, long minutes. They hovered all around me, pulsating slowly, lights flickering within their undulating bodies, patterns of color glowing and shifting rhythmically across their translucent skins. There was a certain dignity to them, I slowly recognized. Even a certain kind of beauty as they floated throbbing in the deep waters. They moved gracefully, I forced myself to admit, trying to avoid looking at those dilating mouths.