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

"Go ahead," replied Onorato. An eagle banked past the window; he half-rose, then settled back as it disappeared. Tired, musty air hissed out of the sofa.
"CC?"
"Yes, Sangria?" crackled the speaker. Its grillwork needed polishing.
"Did she impinge on me?"
"She did not, although her actions had the same result as though she had."
"Well--" plainly, he was fighting back anger, but a tear escaped his right eye anyway "--if it's the same result--"
"No, Sangria. If you're uniquely sensitive, you can't claim impingement simply because somebody treats you as normal. You must do all you can in advance to inform everyone that you're different."
Cereus grunted to himself, and thought, Damfool computer doesn't know you can't walk around saying "I'm different, I'm different"--not when you're twelve years old--it's too scary.
Sangria looked like he wanted to say something similar, but didn't have the words for it. His lower lips trembled.
"Cold Cubes," called Cereus.
"Yes, sir?"
"Who's debbed for the boy's display time?"
"I am; it's his job."
Cereus was astonished. "Credding a boy for watching your displays?"
"Yes, sir."
"Thought you only credded for work."
"The boy is working."
"How?" he demanded.
"I keep them away--I tell CC when fuzz is growing!" blurted out Sangria.
"What he means, sir," interposed CC smoothly, "is that he monitors human-to-human interactions, and warns me when a conflict might result in physical aggression or impingement."
"A twelve-year-old boy can do that?"
"Yes. And I'm teaching him how to do it more efficiently."
"That's why you're paying him, huh?" The sun was setting in the park, and shadows lapped at the corners of the Common Room. From-the corridor came the sharp thwak! thwak! of somebody kanga-ing past.
"Yes, sir."
Cereus nodded. The arrangement felt wrong--the boy was being trained, it seemed, to be a machine, not a person--but if the kid liked it, and his parents hadn't objected . . . "Tell me, CC, is it necessary, what you're doing to him?"
"That would depend on your definition of the word 'necessary'--but I feel it is."
"Why? And turn up the lights, some, getting dark. Thanks."
"Because I have a finite capacity! Excuse me, sir, I allowed irritation to harshen my voice there, which was as wrong as Sangria's reaction to the girl. Let me explain: my ability to monitor the ship and the mayf--the passengers is large, but ultimately limited. Since I have chosen to enforce a code of behavior, I have found myself stretched terribly thin--but for the code to be meaningful, it must be enforced in all situations. Sangria heightens my efficiency by monitoring twenty or more situations in which my units have noted a potential for aggression. Do you understand what I am saying?"
"Yeah." He scratched his beard and pondered a moment. "Thing is. Ice Bucket, it's a heavy load to lay on a kid, isn't it?"
"Possibly, but he seeing competent."
"And highstrung," threw in Onorato. He'd bought himself a beer, which he was sipping noisily.
"Tell you, Cold Cubes," offered Cereus, "whyn't you put this set-up in the boy's Personal Work Area, so that when he's on the job, people won't trip over him and fuzz him up?"
"An excellent idea, Mr. Cereus, but one that Sangria himself has rejected many times. He does not wish to be so isolated."
Cereus looked at the boy, studied his round face, gazed deep into his eyes, eyes that seemed older and more tired than Onorato's, than even Cereus' own. Watching twenty human-to-human interactions every four seconds for the past several months, they had seen more than any twelve-year-old's should have . . . Cereus had sympathy for the boy's desire to remain in the Common Room, to perceive peripherally all who used it, to sense subliminally their warmth and their reality . . . an office would be exile, another barrier between him and the others . . . and yet Cereus also wished that Sangria weren't present, because he had already become something that was not quite human, that was closer to CC's cool electronics than Cereus' flesh and blood . . . Sangria stood on a bridge that didn't reach the bank on either side, and the bridge was cold and lonely . . . he wondered how distorted were the boy's ideas of humanity, when he spent so much time concentrating on potential aggression . . . how much could an untouchable kid know about love and laughter and the gut-level satisfaction of a peaceful, silent smile?
"Ice Bucket," said Cereus slowly, "I think you're making a mistake here . . . but I guess there isn't any way I can stop you, is there?"
"There is not."
"Figure you're God, don't you." It was a statement, not a question.
"Not quite," said CentComp dryly.
"Just the closest thing to it aboard." He sighed. "Lemme have a taste of that beer. Man." Cold and tart, it felt good all the way down. "CC, I can guess what poor little Sangria is going to turn into, and I don't much like it--I won't be around to be bothered by him when he's at his worst, but others--. . . ah," he said, waving a hand dismissively, "pack it! Go about your business. And you, boy, back to your screen."
Once Sangria was safely ensconced before the flashing display, he turned to Onorato again. A silence hung between them, deep and rueful. As if on cue, they shook their heads.
"This has a bearing," said Cereus, "on what I was talking about before we got interrupted--I was saying, it seemed like we lost something of our humanity, and Sangria here is a case in point. Twelve years old, and already half-machine . . . but listen, what I was thinking was, your family could set up a school, you know?"
"A school?" Onorato burped, and threw the empty bottle at the dispose-unit. It snicked! in. "To teach bleep-speak?"
"What?"
"Bleep-speak." Warily, he glanced around. "Maybe . . . do this," he said suddenly, scratching the tip of his nose.
Cereus did.
"Funny thing," Onorato said, apparently abandoning the topic, "it's--" his eyes, averted from the sensor-head, snapped to one side. He continued talking.
Fascinated, Cereus watched and listened--twice. Onorato was saying two separate things at once, as if he had two, independent tongues:
"It's a long way they say we two have come since
["It's way say two]
we did things when we last worked simultaneously,