"Nancy Kress - My Mother, Dancing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

My Mother, Dancing by Nancy Kress
Nancy Kress’s most recent book, Nothing Human, came out last fall from Golden Gryphon
Press. It has been called “a Childhood’s End for the biotech millennium.”
Fermi’s Paradox, California, 1950: Since planet formation appears to be
common, and since the processes that lead to the development of life are a
continuation of those that develop planets, and since the development of life
leads to intelligence and intelligence to technology—then why hasn’t a single
alien civilization contacted Earth?
Where is everybody?



They had agreed, laughing, on a form of the millennium contact, what Micah called
“human standard,” although Kabil had insisted on keeping hirs konfol and Deb had
not dissolved hirs crest, which waved three inches above hirs and hummed. But,
then, Deb! Ling had designed floating baktor for the entire ship, red and yellow
mostly, that combined and recombined in kaleidoscopic loveliness that only Ling
could have programmed. The viewport was set to magnify, the air mixture just
slightly intoxicating, the tinglies carefully balanced by Cal, that master. Ling had
wanted “natural” sleep cycles, but Cal’s arguments had been more persuasive, and
the tinglies massaged the limbic so pleasantly. Even the child had some. It was a
party.

The ship slipped into orbit around the planet, a massive subJovian far from its sun,
streaked with muted color. “Lovely,” breathed Deb, who lived for beauty.

Cal, the biologist, was more practical: “I ran the equations; by now there should
be around two hundred thousand of them in the rift, if the replication rate stayed
constant.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” said Ling, the challenger, and the others laughed. The tinglies
really were a good idea.

The child, Harrah, pressed hirs face to the window. “When can we land?”

The adults smiled at each other. They were so proud of Harrah, and so careful.
Hirs was the first gene-donate of all of them except Micah, and probably the only
one for the rest of them except Cal, who was a certified intellect donor. Kabil
knelt beside Harrah, bringing hirs face close to the child’s height.

“Little love, we can’t land. Not here. We must see the creations in holo.”

“Oh,” Harrah said, with the universal acceptance of childhood. It had not changed
in five thousand years, Ling was fond of remarking, that child idea that whatever it
lived was the norm. But, then . . . Ling.

“Access the data,” Cal said, and Harrah obeyed, reciting it aloud as hirs parents
had all taught hirs. Ling smiled to see that Harrah still closed hirs eyes to access,
but opened them to recite.