"Paul J. McAuley - Gene Wars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

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10

Black-cowled post-humans, gliding slowly in the sun, aggregating and reaggregating like amoebae.
Dolphinoids, tentacles sheathed under fins, rocking in tanks of cloudy water. Ambulatory starfish;
tumbling bushes of spikes; snakes with a single arm, a single leg; flocks of tiny birds, brilliant as emeralds,
each flock a single entity.

People, grown strange, infected with myriads of microscopic machines which re-engraved their body
form at will.

Evan lived in a secluded estate. He was revered as a founding father of the posthuman revolution. A
purple funfur microsaur followed him everywhere. It was recording him because he had elected to die.
“I don't regret anything,” Evan said, “except perhaps not following my wife when she changed. I saw it
coming, you know. All this. Once the technology became simple enough, cheap enough, the companies
lost control. Like television or computers, but I suppose you don't remember those.” He sighed. He had
the vague feeling he'd said all this before. He'd had no new thoughts for a century, except the desire to
put an end to thought.

The microsaur said, “In a way, I suppose I am a computer. Will you see the colonial delegation now?”

“Later.” Evan hobbled to a bench and slowly sat down. In the last couple of months he had developed
mild arthritis, liver spots on the backs of his hands: death finally expressing parts of his genome that had
been suppressed for so long. Hot sunlight fell through the velvet streamers of the tree things; Evan dozed,
woke to find a group of starfish watching him. They had blue, human eyes, one at the tip of each
muscular arm.

“They wish to honour you by taking your genome to Mars,” the little purple triceratops said.

Evan sighed. “I just want peace. To rest. To die.”

“Oh, Evan,” the little triceratops said patiently, “surely even you know that nothing really dies any more.”

About the Author
Paul J. McAuley (1955- ) is a British biologist who has written a number of adventurous, far-future
science fiction novels; his first,Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988) won the Philip K. Dick award. His
attention is often on genetic engineering and cosmology, and he is notable for the sweeping scope of his
dreams. He lives in Fife, Scotland