"Thomas Easton - Organic Future 03 - Woodsman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

Behind him, Sheila blew a short blast of air through her nose. He felt
just as disgusted. "You're wasting your time," he said.

"No!" The man stepped forward, his pamphlets still raised.

Then, "Yes!" he said. "Gengineering is Abomination! It's all in here." He
held out the pamphlets, one of the many jutting forward as if he were offering
to perform a card trick. Sam Nickers did not take one.

"Especially the bots," said the woman earnestly. She meant the plants to
which the gengineers had added human genes, giving them something in the way
of human appearance and intelligence. "And the genimals," she added.
"Especially the ones that think they're so smart."

"We need to get rid of them all," said her partner. "Then we can get back
to the Golden Age." He tapped his cogwheel as if it were a religious emblem.
For him, it was. "Utopia," he said. "The Age of Machines."

They held their heads so that, for the first time, reflections of light
from the apartment at his back drew Sam's attention to the single tiny,
gold-shiny gears they wore in their right earlobes. The gears might have come
from an antique watch.

"No more Macks," said the woman. Now she offered her pamphlets. "Read, and
you'll see. No bots. No Roachsters or Bioblimps or..."

"No green..." The man fell silent, as if he had suddenly realized the
threat he was about to offer the two he was trying to sway to their cause.

"Skins?" said Sheila from behind her husband. "Greenskins" was what the
Engineers called people like her and Sam.

"But you can be repaired!" cried the woman. Yet already the missionary
enthusiasm was fading from her face. She knew that she and her partner would
find no converts here, no demonstrators, no soldiers for the revolution the
Engineers claimed was essential to save humanity for its true, mechanical
destiny.
 Sam said nothing more to them, nothing about shortages of fuels for the
machines, shortages of steel and other minerals, nor of the problems of
chemical, industrial pollution that human civilization had largely left behind
when it chose a more organic path. He simply shook his head and closed the
door.

When Sheila said, "It wouldn't help much if we were, would it?" he shook
his head again. As always, throughout history, converts were suspect. If the
Nickers had the gengineers undo their changes, that would only mean that they
were once more consorting with the enemy. They would not be rejected--the
Engineers would happily enlist anyone and everyone they could to achieve their
ends--but later...Once they were in power, the Engineers, like all the other
extremist groups that had gone before them, would surely purge all those