"Chalker, Jack L - Quintara 1 - The Demons at Rainbow Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

Running a hospital capable of handling emergencies for such a wide variety of species wasn't easy; most hospitals were in districts mainly populated by only two or three races and set up for them. Transport was swift in any event, and, even for humans, there was at least someplace within minutes of an emergency that could handle a human. Expert care was not as much of a problem, but for quite different reasons.
Trannon Kose was a Ybrum, a creature that looked like a set of oval pods connected by spindly, furry, giant pipe cleaners. He looked fragile, but moved with a swiftness and grace that belied his appearance, and the Ybrum were a pretty tough bunch when they had to be.
Modra barged in, spotted Tran and the Durquist, and went right to them. "All right, now what's all this about?"
"Apparently I was quite correct in my basic analysis," the Durquist responded. "Tris was suddenly placed in an untenable position, losing what he most cared for and yet unable to leave as his sanity demanded. We feared that this would take the form of violence, and it did, but not in the way we originally thought."
"He apparently headed straight for the District and went under," Kose put in. "He popped so many feelgoods and so much else that they had to send his blood up for chemical analysis just to find out how much was natural. He stayed like that for the past three and a half days, in a hole provided by an underworld friend for whom we've done some favors now and again. Apparently he overdosed, awoke, and felt the massive depression that coming down from such a chemical high produces, which added to his existing depression. He shot himself in the head, apparently with some sort of archaic projectile weapon he either owned or got from somebody down there."
She took a sharp breath and stiffened as the shock hit her. "He's dead, then?"
"That is the usual condition one finds oneself in after blowing one's brains out," the Durquist responded pragmatically. "The question now is whether or not to let him stay that way."
That shocked her almost as much as the initial news. "Huh? But you just said -- "
"That he is dead," the Durquist completed. "In most cases that would be it, but we're in the capital. The technology available here is quite a bit more advanced than they allow us mere citizens, since all the surgeons are cymols capable of plugging themselves in and reading into their own brains, or whatever is inside those heads, the exact medical data and skills they need for any race. It appears that we and Tris have blundered into a moral, legal, and ethical conundrum of the Guardians themselves. Ah -- here's the physician in charge now. We wanted you here for this, since in a way it's up to us."
The surgeon turned out to be a human, or at least a human in appearance, and a rather young and delicate-looking woman at that, with dark features and very short hair, dressed in a surgical gown. She was walking a bit oddly, and there was something unnerving in her manner as she approached.
To Modra, there was an additional unnerving aspect as well. She was an empath, and while she could damp it down, it was never completely suppressed, and, being tired, she was even less able to do so. Almost everyone in this reception center radiated something -- fear, concern, joy, sorrow -- all those things common to almost all sentient life forms. All but the surgeon and a few of the others in medical garb. She almost had to force herself to ignore that sense she had that most did not, and remember that the doctor was really there. There were no emotions, ho feelings, emanating from the doctor at all, any more than from the walls or desks or chairs.
"I apologize if I seem out of sorts," the surgeon told them, "but at the moment I have just finished five procedures on five different life forms and I have the data, from anatomy and physiology down to the molecular level, as well as the psychological data on all of them, inside me. It often creates problems, as all are equal in my mind at the moment and the human one is, shall we say, outnumbered."
"That's all right," Modra responded, able to comprehend the problem if not the kind of brain that could hold that much data. "Now, what's this all about?"
"Your associate committed suicide, but we were able to have a crew there within a few minutes, get him tanked, and perform a data readout before full electrochemical activity ceased in the undamaged areas. The damage was quite extensive but mostly to the forebrain area; the way the human mind stores data is quite complex but is not generally in those areas, which are used primarily for synthesis. We lost much of the newest information but got most of the rest into storage. It's routine in these cases, and helps us understand the various races better and also why and how these things happen."
"Let me get this straight," Modra said, feeling a bit odd, as if this weren't really happening, but some sort of dream. "He's dead, but you have his memories in some kind of storage bank, like computer data?"
"Something like that, yes. It is not terribly common that we can get this much -- the damage is usually to areas further back as well and we usually get to the victim too late -- but it's not unheard of. We get a few dozen cases a year, mostly from accidents of course, so there are procedures to be followed. Your company insurance was paid up only three days ago after long arrears, but it was paid up before this occurred and there is a determination that the two actions, the premium payment and the suicide, are not related. That is, the patient didn't know about the insurance, and you three did not suspect the patient would kill himself. As an employee, he is therefore fully covered for any procedures we might do."
"Somehow the fact that we're insured is not very important to me right now," Modra said dryly.
"No, it simply calls for a decision on your part, since the patient has no declared next of kin and is, therefore, subject to your company's decisions."
"You mean," Modra asked, mild hope growing within her, "that you can actually restore him to life?"
"In a manner of speaking only. If it were simply a matter of being able to restore him, we would do so, curing at the same time the root cause of his psychosis, of course. The insurance would mandate it, since the death benefit is huge. What is possible in these cases is to perform the cymol conversion, then read back in his memories and simulate as much as possible of his old self, just as all of the information for five races is now inside me."
The implications of this were staggering. "You mean -- remove his brain, essentially, and replace it with an artificial brain, a computer of some kind capable of running the body, and then feed it data to convince it that it was still him?"
The doctor reached up to her own hair and tugged at it gently, removing the natural-looking wig as if it were a hat. She was totally bald beneath, without a sign of hair -- or surgery -- but on one side of the skull was a large rectangular metal plate that seemed to have hundreds upon hundreds of tiny silver dots on it. "It is not quite as bad as all that," she said.
Modra sank slowly into a chair that wasn't really built for the human form. She just had to sit down, though. It was strange -- somehow she felt curiously unreal, disconnected, as if this weren't really happening. Still, she was there, and clearly the other two were deferring in some measure to her as owner of the company.
She tried to think about this, but really couldn't. Finally she said, "So it would look like Tris and have Tris's memories but it wouldn't really be Tris."
"Yes and no," the doctor responded, replacing her hair and looking more human again. "At the root level, he would be cymol, not human. His personality would be synthesized from his own recorded self-images and from any that you all provide, but it would be synthesized, a layer atop the cymol. He would not be the same, but he would seem -- close. The psychochemistry would no longer be there for many things. Emotions would be synthesized, rather than real, and would never be out of control. Certain drives that are brain-driven would no longer exist. Things like sexual urges, rages, even endorphin highs, would be impossible, of course. My body, for example, requires rest but my brain requires no sleep."
"I don't want some inhuman android going around animating his corpse?" she snapped, then realized how that sounded. "It's different with you and the others. I mean, I don't know you. I didn't know you before you became a cymol, and I have no personal attachments or biases."
"I believe," the Durquist interjected, "that the real questions here go beyond that. I find the decision distasteful, but I am forced to be totally pragmatic here. If we say yes, we get back an approximation of Tris Lankur. If we say no, he dies completely."
"Essentially. I must add, at the risk of sounding insensitive, that you would in that case forfeit the death benefit from the insurance, since the cymol route was available and was offered."
"I don't care about the damned money!" Modra snapped. "Damn it, I was the one who caused this! I was the one who killed him! Isn't that bad enough? Isn't that enough for me to have to live with? Do I have to work with a living, breathing reminder of what I've done?"
"Fascinating," the Durquist commented, mostly to himself. "This is a most intriguing wrinkle. One that Tris, wherever his spirit is now, if such a thing exists for humans, must find cynically amusing. By his action, he has precisely reversed your positions, handing you the very situation that you presented to him. Instead of his being forced to live and work on the ship around you, with a constant reminder of what he can never have, it is you who would be in that situation."
"I -- I don't think I could do it any more than he could!" she told him.
"Then you could quit the team as you suggested he do. Unlike him, you have an alternative livelihood. We already have to hire a replacement for poor Hama; finding an experienced empath would not be much more of a chore. You can leave, or you could work with him."
"I could let him die!"
"A singularly selfish act, although I fear one in character at least as far as the new Modra is concerned. Having a cymol on the team would transform us from a second-rate and never-was broken down company into one that would be almost, if not absolutely, unique. The access to the master data banks alone would be invaluable. The competitive advantage alone would be enormous. The potential staggers even me. Not to mention having someone who could carry with them the skills and data for everything from highly technical analysis to patching up a Durquist or a Ybrum. And, although imperfectly, it would go a ways to undoing what you originally caused. For competitive, commercial, economic reasons you must approve it. And for selfish reasons, too. A team is no better than its members. If you alone remain, with that dilapidated ship and trash-filled office, your husband's company will hardly send business your way. They'll write you off. A team is called a team because it always works together, knows each other. That is how I was able to find you back on that slime world. How you and Tris could find each other and work together so seamlessly. No husband worth anything would let you go out with a totally new, green crew. No Exchange member corporation would tolerate it."
"And," Trannon Kose put in, "you owe it to him."
She looked up at them in anguish, looking for friends and finding only torturers. "You two really would want that?"
"Of course not," Tran responded simply. "We want Tris back. But, if we can't have him, then we want the next best thing."
"And there is the pragmatic side," the Durquist added. "We do not do this sort of work because it is a fun game. If I could sacrifice the advantage presented here and have the old Tris back, I would do so, because the integrity of the team comes before all else, and because he was my friend and comrade. We cannot have the old Tris back. He is gone, and I am still here. Hama is gone, but I am still here, too. Unlike poor Hama, however, Tris left us a legacy which can profit those of us still here. I am not inclined to refuse it because you might feel just awful to get it. I will supplement Tran's sage comment. You owe it to us. Or would you rather slink back to your kind husband and fancy apartment, with two more so-called friends and long associates to add to your list of victims?"
She didn't have any reply to that, and just sat there for several minutes, not really able to think. Finally she looked at the surgeon and asked, "Just how much of what we'd get would be Tris? And how much would be illusion?''
The surgeon hardly blinked at that one. "To be truthful, a fair amount of him will survive. The nature and area of the wound, and its precision, well, it almost seems as if going cymol was what he had in mind all along, as incredible as that may seem."
"Not very incredible," commented the Durquist. "It would be just the sort of revenge he'd come up with, and just the type of gamble."
Modra gave the Durquist a killing look, but realized it was true. "Honestly, though -- how much of the real him would -- come back?"
"Memory, habit patterns, that sort of thing. Much of what made him a unique individual. What is damaged beyond repair, and would be replaced in any event, is the control center, as it were. The central processor. But there are no guarantees. There is shock, trauma, and bleeding that needed to be tended to and that took a bit of fine surgery just to get him to this point. As to illusion -- as long as no fraud is involved, why worry? I am not saying that he will be the same. He won't. But he'll be close, for all intents and purposes."
"Look, I've had four hours sleep, and right now I'm just wrenched and drained out. Can't I have a little time to think this over? Sort it out in my own mind?" Modra pleaded.
"Maintaining a body under these conditions, as well as the storage, is quite difficult and quite expensive," the surgeon noted. "The insurance company wants an immediate decision for its own cost containments, and, of course, every hour we wait decreases the chance of a successful operation. I'm afraid that no decision is a decision."
"I don't know why you hesitate," the Durquist noted acidly. "What you are being offered is exactly what you wanted, isn't it?"
"No!" she snapped, but her anger wasn't really directed at the Durquist. She felt upset, confused, as if everything she'd taken for granted just shattered. This wasn't fair, damn it! She didn't put a stupid gun to her head, or his. She'd always had a full measure of confidence in her dealings with others because her empathic talent gave her an edge. Now it, too, had betrayed her.
But wasn't the Durquist right? Hadn't she been so self-centered, so blind to anybody's interests or feelings but her own, that, in fact, she had caused all this? From her own viewpoint, from a practical and day-to-day point of view, wasn't this exactly what she had wanted?
No! Damn it! She had loved him. Really loved him. There was never any real doubt in her mind about that. She just didn't want to ruin him, and what she needed would have ruined him for sure.
Well, he couldn't be more ruined than this, could he?