"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Chimera" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

Gen nodded. Then she straightened her shoulders before she asked the difficult
question, the one that might make her seem like a fool. "Do you think that he
thinks like a human? I mean, he has an enhanced brain, and you designed it to
be like a person's."

"That was my argument. Hiding. Tantrums. Not knowing limits. It seemed to me
like he was an out-of-control child. But the others wouldn't hear of it." Moya
traced the barrel of the pistol with one finger. "Think of it. If it were
true, if Cedric had developed a human mind, then what were we doing to him? We
were as bad as those pro-lifers said we were. We're worse than PETA makes us
out to be. We're real monsters."

Gen had no response. Her dance work had always seemed cut-and-dried. Elegant
solutions without ethical considerations, not even in the fund-raising work.
She didn't know what she would do if she were told her work would benefit
millions of people, but to do it, she had to irreparably damage fifty
innocents.

"Do you think Cedric can understand speech?" Gen asked.

Moya stopped tracing the barrel. "Yes, but he'll never be able to talk back to
you, not in English anyway. His mouth isn't designed for it."

"But he could learn to understand a language."

"Probably," Moya said. "Cats have a twenty-one-sound vocabulary and seem to
have a small verbal language. If we accidentally enhanced that even a little,
he would probably be able to communicate with you quite well."

The words hung between them for a moment. Then Gen said, "Do you have any idea
what's causing his night terrors?"

"A guess," Moya said. "We fine-tuned his memory. You and I, we remember only
certain events, but he probably remembers every single thing that happened to
him. Every moment of every day."

"Why would that scare him so?" Gen asked.

Moya stared at her. "I think it would be awful not to be able to forget
anything, don't you?"

Gen let out a small breath. She knew what it was like. If she could forget the
accident, she would. If she could forget how Dar looked on the pavement,
crumpled and broken, she would. She remembered other things about him, just
not as strongly as that last moment.

Was that how Cedric thought? Were the painful things stronger than the
pleasant ones? Or had he had so few pleasant experiences in his life that he
didn't even understand what they were?