"Mike Resnick & David Gerrold - Jellyfish" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

The disappearance of the Tryllifandillorians from the Sevagram had
created a cosmic imbal-ance in the morphic fields of several dimensions of
fortean space.

There was no Law of Conservation of Sentience. There was,
however, a group of monitors who understood that too much sentience in
the dodecasphere could produce disastrous ripples of psychic torment.
The sudden startling disappearance of the Tryllifandillorians was evidence
of that.

In an attempt to repair the damage and restore the cosmonic balance,
the small brown monitors had located the most discordant nexus of the
strongest morphic broadcasters. Sci-fi writers.
 The monitors were not motivated by any kind of healing impulse. The
survival of the dodecasphere and the remaining sentient species in it,
including themselves, depended on rebalancing the still-ring-ing morphic
fields.

The monitors made themselves known to select-ed sci-fi writers and
offered them the opportunity to emigrate to far Tryllifandillor, where they
would be transmuted into Jellyfish, and—now liberated from the mundane
concerns of existence—would be free to create monumental works of Art
(note the capital A.) Their fantastic creations would be inscribed directly into
the marble columns of Eter-nity itself. The sci-fi writers enthusiastically
agreed, and they all strode eagerly up the gangway into the waiting ship with
a sense of renewed mis-sion. A few of them remembered to turn around
and wave to their proud families, but most were looking forward to their
luminous futures.

****

FILK PULLED THE fifth page out of the typewriter, laid it carefully on the
growing stack, and slid a sixth page into the machine. He was on a roll.

****

ACTUALLY, THE SCI-FI writers hadn’t emigrated at all. And certainly not
enthusiastically. They had been kidnapped, snatched out of the various
beds they had fallen into (rarely their own, especially if they were at a
convention). But the monitors want-ed the sci-fi writers to think that they had
emigrated willingly and eagerly, so they put the appropriate memories into
their minds. They were very good at that. They had had a lot of practice with
the Tryllifandillorians, convincing them that something as silly as frelching
was useful and important.

But the monitors had made a serious mistake. They did not realize
that they were dealing with Darryl K. Fink.

Fink had a lot of experience with alternate exis-tence. He expected