"James Patrick Kelly - Dividing the Sustain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

“I was hoping to be gay,” Been said.

Although it didn’t open its eyes, Emsley’s thinking head scowled. A flicker of
embarrassment passed across the features of the talking head at being caught
celebrating himself so thoroughly. “Yes, of course.”

“Are there side effects I should know about?” Been pushed at the deck and
the float drifted a few centimeters closer to the counter. “I heard there were changes
in the brain.”

Emsley shrugged. “The interstitial nucleus of your anterior hypothalamus will
shrink over time, but no one will be able to tell that unless they peel your brain as
part of a total reembodiment. The pheromone palette in your sweat will change. The
people who you live with who are used to the way you smell might tell you that
something’s different, without knowing what exactly.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad.”

As Emsley leaned forward, his chair cracked once again and recurved around
him. “In some ways, sexual reorientation is the most subtle of all possible recastings.
Your sexuality, however you decide to express it, does not reside solely in your
DNA. It’s in your brain, your genitals, your memory, your image of yourself and
your personality. Yes, we can manipulate nature but there is also nurture to consider.
I was gay for more than two centuries and I was still having great sex with men some
forty years after I became genetically straight. Just as you will have a hundred and
something years of heterosexual nurture to deal with if you become gay.”

“Thirty-two.” He bounced off the float. “A hundred and thirty-two. My
birthday is Friday, can you do it before then?”

Emsley never got the chance to answer. The high-pitched wail of a child in
pain filled the passageway just outside BioCore Receiving. The hatch slid aside
revealing two dazed colonists carrying a very pale boy, who was maybe five or six.
His right hand was wrapped in a bloody towel.

“There.” Emsley pointed to the float where Been had just been sitting and they
set the boy down on it. Been pressed himself against the rear bulk-head to keep out
of the way.

The boy tried to curl into himself around the wounded hand but the
bioengineer gently rolled him onto his back. “What is this then?” Emsley’s manner
was so cool he might have been asking the time.

“The boys got into the air vent somehow and Joss stuck his hand into a fan,”
said the man, whom Been took to be the dad. “It was dark.”

The expressions on Emsley’s faces were calm but alert as he pushed the
boy’s hair aside. “Boys,” he said, as he painted sensor sprites onto the pallid
forehead with his medfinger. Been could hear the lightboard begin to sing the boy’s