"Barry N. Malzberg - Phase IV" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

connection spreading from one mind to the next, and in the midst of those
connections the stone sent, for the second time in its journey, a bolt of
energy, much weaker, but sufficient to do the necessary. Under the thrust
of that bolt, the minds quickened. Something happened to them, the
connections became broader, richer, deeper in stroke. They keened to one
another. Connection became a fine mesh.
Now under the guidance of the stone, the quickened intelligences were
working. From various parts there was a gathering: instructions were
passed and with precision the next part of the project, one that could only
be accomplished through directed effort, was started. The minds scurried.
The stone beneath them extended visual centers to see what was
happening, and all was going as it should and it felt pleasure. Available to
it was a welter of emotions, but it discarded all but the pleasure, worked
upon it, then sent it on a narrow thread to those it controlled. They
throbbed with gratification.
The slabs grew. Seven of them on the desert, white, six feet in height,
cunningly hollowed out, where at the stone's orders, their horrid secrets
began to pulsate. Complex readjustments were made in the biological
system of the intelligences; from those changes came something that both
was and was not like them. One within a slab, guarded from the
landscape, those things grew.
At length, the stone on the desert felt the vast weakness that comes
when a task is completed, knowing this without questioning. Although it
was very complex and subtle, it was ultimately only a tool, and when a
tool's work is done, it must be put away. Without remorse, regret, or a
sense of loss, the thing encapsulated in the stone considered the fact of its
death and then, almost casually, shut down certain intricate facets. The
energy within it flickered, flamed, and perished.
The thing died, and at the instant of its death, a hundred million
light-years away, in a checking-center that had been wailing since the
journey began, a message was received. OPERATIVE the message said,
although in no language that could be understood, for it was a language
not composed of sound but of light and distance.
Inside the towers, things grew.




II

The ants were breeding now, and what came out of the queens in the
slabs were ants of a different sort, inheriting the new method of
connection. The older ants, some of them, clung tenaciously to their own
habits, but the life cycles of ants are quite short, and those that emerged
from the queens were strong. The larvae burst from the eggs, rested
awhile, and then foraged out into the desert on their complex but
ultimately simple task.
An old worker ant, stumbling through one of the slabs, passed into the
queen's belly and attempted to rupture it. The queen screamed without
sound and in a few seconds there were one hundred, two hundred soldiers