"Paul Preuss - Venus Prime 5 - Diamond Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

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PART ONE

TO THE SHORE OF THE
SHORELESS OCEAN
I
Earlier the same day, on another continent . . .

“You aren’t sure you are human,” said the young woman. She sat on a spoke-backed chair of varnished
pine. In her oval face her brows were wide ink strokes above eyes of liquid brown, and beneath her
upturned nose her mouth was full, her lips innocent in their delicate, natural pinkness. Her long brown
hair hung in burnished waves to the shoul-ders of her summery print dress. “I believe that’s where we
left off.”

“Isn’t that where we always leave off?” Sparta’s lips were fuller than the other woman’s, perpetually
open, as if testing the breeze; they did not curve easily into a smile.

“Certainly that is the question you hope to have an-swered. And until you do—or decide that some other
ques-tion is more interesting—it seems we shall have to keep returning to it.”

The room was unfurnished except for the chairs on which the two women sat facing each other from
opposite corners. There were no pictures on the cream-painted walls, no rugs on the polished sycamore
planks of the floor. The rain had stopped sometime in the night. The morning air was fragrant with the
aroma of the greening woods, and where sunlight came through the open casement, it was warm on the
skin.

Sparta’s straight blond hair just reached the high collar of her soft black tunic; together they framed her
face, a smooth oval like Linda’s. She turned her head to look out the single window. “They remade me
to hear things no nat-ural human can hear, see things no natural human can see, analyze what I taste and
smell—not only with precision but consciously, specifying molecular structure—and calculate faster
than any human being, and integrate myself with any electronic computer. They even gave me the power
to com-municate in the microwave. How can I be human?”

“Are the deaf human? The blind? Where does a quadri-plegic’s humanity end—somewhere in her spinal
cord, or where her wheels touch the ground? Are such people de-humanized by their prostheses?”

“I was born perfect.”

“Congratulations.”



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Sparta’s pale skin brightened. “You already know everything I know and much more. Why is this such a
difficult question for you?”

“Because only you can answer it. Do you know these lines?