"Alastair Reynolds - A Spy In Europa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

of it in the aquarium." Vargovic fingered the gills in his neck.

"Something that would make this look like cosmetic surgery. We heard the

Demarchy had tailored the sulphur-based metabolism of the ventlings for

human use."

She whistled. "That would be quite a trick."

"Useful, though - especially if you wanted a workforce who could tolerate

the anoxic environments around the vents, where the Demarchy happens to

have certain minerological interests."

"Maybe." Cholok paused. "But the changes required would be beyond surgery.

You'd have to script them in at the developmental level. And even then...

I'm not sure what you'd end up with would necessarily be human anymore."

It was as if she shivered, though Vargovic was the one who felt cold,

still standing naked beside the revival table. "All I can say is, if it

happened, no one told me."

"I thought I'd ask, that's all."

"Good." She brandished a white medical scanner. "Now can I run a few more

tests? We have to follow procedure."

Cholok was right: quite apart from the fact that Vargovic's operation was

completely real - and therefore susceptible to complications which had to

be looked for and monitored - any deviation from normal practise was

undesirable.

After the first hour or so, the real strangeness of his transformation hit
home. He had been blithely unaffected by it until then, but when he saw

himself in a full-body mirror, in the corner of Cholok's revival room, he

knew that there was no going back.