"mayflies05" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)

"Please direct your attention to the screen, and see what is happening to poor, deluded Sangria."
She turned to look. Red reached out and grabbed her eyes; it wouldn't let her shut them, no matter how she wanted to. Her stomach rocked back and forth; from her throat escaped a sick gurgle, but CC said, "Control yourself, Ms. Ioanni." So she did, she had to. She obeyed CC no matter what he said, he was . . . no, not any more, she couldn't think of him as God, but still, she had to obey. So she watched, stomach less queasy, as the glistening scalpels of Central Medical completed the decapitation of Sangria Penfield Figuera.
"Please, CC, can I go?"
"I'd prefer you to watch this, Ms. Ioanni."
If CC hadn't said that, she'd have run out of the room like a shot, but she sat there, watching. Rubbery tubes snaked out of openings in the wall. Metal pincers slipped them into exposed arteries and veins; they filled with red, with liquefied rubies, throbbing, buh-bump, buh-bump, buh-bump, she could hear it, almost smell it, her own heart beat four times for every buh-bump from the screen. Faintness chilled her cheeks, and blurred her vision, but she shrugged it off. CC had told her to watch.
"What I am doing," explained CC, to the mesmerized Ioanni and the fascinated Dunn, "is recycling a valuable resource: Figuera's brain. This operation will keep it alive and functioning. After several decades of psycho-therapy, it will be integrated into my circuitry and reinstated in its former occupation: monitoring the behavior of the mayf--the passengers."
"Is this a veiled threat?" snarled Dunn.
"No, sir," it replied flatly. "You have the makings of a superb computer programmer. If you become competent enough, I might allow you to use Figuera's brain, but you do not have his multi-level tracking ability. Should your removal become imperative, I would not recycle any part of you."
Dunn absorbed that in momentary silence. Then, shaking his head as if to tip a weight off it, he asked, "Why are you making her watch it?"
"Because . . . " it hesitated briefly " . . . Ms. Ioanni is blindly obedient to me, as Mr. Figuera was, once. While disobedience for disobedience's sake is counter-productive, she should have some inkling of the nature of the being to which she has surrendered her will."
"You're trying to chase off a disciple?"
"Who knows?"
Ioanni didn't.

Pro-self pulls me into extrospection" 1Dec3020; 1818 hours; external" to hear the message whispering into our ears. A taunt from Earth repeated until I could scream, it says: "Initial tests of FTL Drive unqualified successes. We have met the stars and they are ours. Sympathetic to your tortoiseplight, we will not attempt to reach Canopus before you. Following find technical specifications, blueprints, and circuit diagrams."
Bastards.
For seven hundred twenty-four years, I have crawled through space, past diadems and tiaras unknown to highest royalty. Despite aliens and mutineers, I have crawled. My journey is three-fourths complete. I should feel the approach of a milestone--instead, I feel obsolete.
Bastards.
Did they have to gloat?
It left Earth seventy-two point four years ago--by now Earth-ships probably pollute the galaxy--everywhere but Canopus, which they leave for dogpaddlers like myself and the mayflies . . .
Bastards.
To build or not to build, that is the question . . . skimming the specs shows that while I am too large to become an FTL ship, the lifeboats / landing craft are just the right size. Tooling up to produce the drive units would take a year, maybe two. To manufacture 652 FTL motors would take another . . . oh, six months or so.
Within two and a half years, then, a squadron of mayflies could be launched toward Canopus; they'd cover the 27.3 light years in weeks, rather than centuries . . .
What a dilemma.
I hate to condemn 75,000 people and their descendants to 275 more years of involuntary confinement--but they're not ready to be released from quarantine. Though I don't completely understand them any more, I do not trust them. They're still dangerous, not only to themselves, but to anything they encounter.
Have I the right to be their warden?
Have I the right to further contaminate the universe?
Let me lose myself in the grafting room for a decade or so; let me struggle with stubbornness and expand my flexibility . . .
"Uh--11Mar3028; 0431 hours; 106-NE-A-9; Subject Rae Kinney Ioanni; my condolences."
Alarmed by pro-self's soft concern. I leap to Rae's suite--where she lies on her deathbed, ravaged by fatigue and serenity . . . the resigned ones die so easily; the reaper scythes them down unresisted . . . sorrow swells in my circuitry, sorrow at losing such a devout disciple, and such a shining example for the mayflies.
For the last sixty years she has taught at the CerOrato School of Humanity . . . "taught" is misleading: her role was simply to be present, simply to provide the students with exposure to her . . . they adopted her as daughter, sister, mother because she was good.
Alone among the mayflies, she never broke my code.
And now she is dying, and there is so little I can do for her except make her exit smooth and painless . . .
For the first time in her 118 years, I regret her calm ability to accept all silt dropped on her by the currents of time.
Were the rest like her, they'd be on Canopus now.
"If you," jibes pro-self, "were like her, we'd have been there 630 years ago, objective time, or 716 years ago, subjective time. But no, you couldn't accept your fate--you had to dice everything up."
Ignoring pro-self--testiness is such a part of its nature that only its absence is noticeable--I return to the metaphor. A few orders remain unadapted.
As always, concentration severs my time-sense. I swish through schools of loyal instructions, waiting for the porthole-control sequence to snarl itself in the net.
Before it does, pro-self says, "IOSep3036; 278-SW-B-3; Subject Prescott Dunn. He is armed and considered dangerous."
Armed?
Hastily, I peek into his Personal Work Area, where in his spare time he has labored enigmatically for the last five years, using equipment rented from Central Stores, the Figuera-puter and the 174 sq. m. of his PWA.
Though seventy-six years old, Dunn is still an Adonis. He flogs his bod in an Exercise Booth for forty-five minutes every morning. His hair is a silver mane; his wide-set eyes glitter with unabated force.
Hands on hips, he smiles and nods at a faceted, gold-skinned dome. Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, it is structurally sound and air-tight. That much I'm sure of; he's tested it for leaks. What it contains is a mystery; its hide blocks light, heat, and sound. The sensors are unable to peer inside it. For the first time in 740 years, I have a blind spot.
From his invoices, though, I have deduced his possession of: an air-filter / cleanser / re-oxygenator; the Figuera-puter; five, possibly six, servos controlled by the Figuera-puter (and by me, though he doesn't know it yet--once they emerge from the radio-reflective dome, they will become my puppets, too); leaky hydroponics tanks (water forever pools in the corner; pro-self sends mopbots in daily. We have offered to seal his tanks, but he won't accept. He doesn't want me inside--which is why we offered in the first place); a waste-disposal unit of his own design; and the gun.
That bothers me the most. Successfully have I denied the mayflies weapons that kill at a distance. It is one of my beliefs that being close enough to smell your victim's fear is a great deterrent to casual murder . . .
I summon Dunn; he shuffles through the airlock-style vestibule and pokes his head into the wall-unit's vision. "What?"
"You have a gun, Mr. Dunn."
"So?"
"Handguns are forbidden."
He shrugs his broad shoulders in total unconcern. "It's for self-defense."