"Frank Herbert - The Green Brain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

Slowly, he steeled himself for what had to be done, brought his specialised parts into play
and began burrowing into the earth of the cave. Deeper and deeper he burrowed, thrusting
the excess dirt behind and out to make it appear the cave had collapsed.
Ten meters in he went before stopping. His store of energy contained just enough reserve
for the next stage. He turned on to his back, scattering the dead parts of legs and back,
exposing the queen and her guard cluster to the dirt beneath his chitinous spine. Orifices
opened at his thigh, exuded the cocoon foam, the soothing green cover that would harden
into a protective shell.
This was victory; the essential parts had survived.
Time was the thing now - some twenty days to gather new energy, go through the
metamorphosis and disperse. Soon there'd be thousands of him - each with its carefully
mimicked clothing and identification papers, each with this appearance of humanity.
Identical - each of them.
There'd be other checkpoints, but not as severe; other barriers - lesser ones.
This human copy had proved to be a good one. The supreme integration of his kind had
chosen well. They'd learned much from study of scattered captives in the sertao. But it was
so difficult to understand the human creature. Even when they were permitted a limited
freedom, it was almost impossible to reason with them. Their supreme integration eluded all
attempts at contact.
 And always the primary question remained: How could any supreme integration permit
the disaster that was overtaking this entire planet?
Difficult humans - their slavery to the planet would have to be proved to them ...
dramatically, perhaps.
The queen stirred near the cool dirt, prodded into action by her guards. Unifying
communication went out to all the body parts, seeking the survivors, assessing strengths.
They'd learned new things this time about escaping notice from humans. All the subsequent
colony clusters would share that knowledge. One of them at least would get through to the
city by the Amazon 'River Sea' where the death-for-all appeared to originate. One of them
had to get through.




Chapter II


drifted on the cabaret's air. Each smoke, the signature of a table, wafted
PASTEL SMOKES
upwards from a table's central vent - here a pale mauve, across the way a pink as delicate
as baby skin, there a green that brought to mind Indian gauze woven of pampas grass. It
had just turned 9.00 p.m. and the Cabaret A'Chigua, Bahia's finest, had begun its nightly
entertainment. Tinkling bell music set a sensuous rhythm for a troupe of dancers posturing
in stylised ant costumes. Their fake antennae and mandibles waved through the smokes.
A'Chigua's patrons occupied low divans. The women were a sprinkling of tropical color as
rich as jungle flowers arranged against men in white linen and, here and there like
punctuation marks, the glistening white smocks of bandeirantes. This was the Green area,
where bandeirantes could relax and play after duty in the Red jungle or at the barriers.
Shoptalk and smalltalk in a dozen languages flowed through the room -
'Tonight I take a pink table for luck. It is the color of a woman's breast, no?' … 'So I laid
down a blanket of foamal and we went in and cleaned out the whole nest - mutated ants like