"Joe Haldeman - Camouflage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

tough.
And adaptable. What kind of organisms can live on a world as
hot as Mercury, which then is suddenly as distant from its sun as
Pluto within the course of a few years?
Most of that life survives by simplicity—lying dormant until
the proper conditions return. The dominant form of life, though,
thrives on change. It's a creature that can force its own evolution—
not by natural selection, but by unnatural mutation, changing itself
as conditions vary. It becomes whatever it needs to be—and after
millions of swifter and swifter changes, it becomes something that
can never die.
The price of eternal life had been a life with no meaning
beyond simple existence. With its planet swinging wildly through
the cluster, the creatures' days were spent crawling through deserts
gnawing on rocks, scrabbling across ice, or diving into muck—in
search of any food that couldn't get away.
The world spun this way and that, until random forces finally
tossed it to the edge of the cluster, away from the constant glare of
a million suns—into a stable orbit: a world that was only half day
and half night; a world where clement seas welcomed diversity.
Dozens of species became millions, and animals crawled up from
the warm sea onto land grown green, buzzing with life.
The immortal creatures relaxed, life suddenly easy. They
looked up at night, and saw stars.
They developed curiosity, then philosophy, and then science.
During the day, they would squint into a sky with a thousand
sparks of sun. In the night's dark, across an ocean of space, the cool
billowing oval of our Milky Way Galaxy beckoned.
Some of them built vessels, and hurled themselves into the
night. It would be a voyage of a million years, but they'd lived
longer than that, and had patience.
A million years before man is born and its story begins, one
such vessel splashes into the Pacific Ocean. It goes deep, following
an instinct to hide. The creature that it carried to Earth emerges,
assesses the situation, and becomes something appropriate for
survival.
For a long time it lives on the dark bottom, under miles of
water, large and invincible, studying its situation. Eventually, it
abandons its anaerobic hugeness and takes the form of a great
white shark, the top of the food chain, and goes exploring, while
most of its essence stays safe inside the vessel.
For a long time, it remembers where the vessel is, and
remembers where it came from, and why. As centuries go by,
though, it remembers less. After dozens of millennia, it simply
lives, and observes, and changes.
It encounters humanity and notes their acquired superiority—
their placement, however temporary, at the top of every food chain.
It becomes a killer whale, and then a porpoise, and then a
swimmer, and wades ashore naked and ignorant.
But eager to learn.