"Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space 04 - Absolution Gap" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

so massively unlikely that they could only be interpreted as hallucinations
introduced at a later stage of data processing. It had to grasp that the
Gnostic Ascension was a physical object embedded in space. It also had to
grasp that the events recorded by the ship’s web of sensors were caused by
objects and quanta permeating that space: dust grains, magnetic fields,
radar echoes from nearby bodies; and by the radiation from more distant
phenomena: worlds, stars, galaxies, quasars, the cosmic background
signal. In order to do this it had to be able to make accurate guesses about
how the data returns from all these objects were supposed to behave. No
one had ever given it these rules; it had formulated them for itself, over
time, making corrections as it accumulated more information. It was a
never-ending task, but at this late stage in the game it considered itself
rather splendid at it.
It knew, for instance, that planets—or rather the abstract objects in its
model that corresponded to planets—were definitely not supposed to do
that. The error was completely inexplicable as an outside-world event.
Something must have gone badly wrong at the data-capture stage.
It pondered this a little more. Even allowing for that conclusion, the
anomaly was still difficult to explain. It was so peculiarly selective,
affecting only the planet itself. Nothing else, not even the planet’s moons,
had done anything in the least bit odd.
The subpersona changed its mind: the anomaly had to be external, in
which case the subpersona’s model of the real world was shockingly
flawed. It didn’t like that conclusion either. It was a long time since it had
been forced to update its model so drastically, and it viewed the prospect
with a stinging sense of affront.
Worse, the observation might mean that the Gnostic Ascension itself
was… well, not exactly in immediate ganger—the planet in question was
still dozens of light-hours away—but conceivably headed for something
that might, at some point in the future, pose a non-negligible risk to the
ship.
That was it, then. The subpersona made its decision: it had no choice
but to alert the crew on this one.
That meant only one thing: a priority interrupt to Queen Jasmina.
The subpersona established that the queen was currently accessing
status summaries through her preferred visual read-out medium. As it
was authorised to do, it seized control of the data channel and cleared
both screens of the device ready for an emergency bulletin.
It prepared a simple text message: SENSOR ANOMALY: REQUEST
ADVICE.
For an instant—significantly less than the half-second that the original
event had consumed—the message hovered on the queen’s read-out,
inviting her attention.
Then the subpersona had a hasty change of heart.
Perhaps it was making a mistake. The anomaly, bizarre as it had been,
had cleared itself. No further reports of strangeness had emanated from
any of the underlying layers. The planet was behaving in the way the
subpersona had always assumed planets were supposed to.
With the benefit of a little more time, the layer decided, the event could
surely be explained as a perceptual malfunction. It was just a question of