"microbe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Slonczewski Joan)

Microbe



by Joan Slonczewski
biologist and science fiction author
at Kenyon College

Microbe was first published in Analog, August 1995; reprinted in David G.
Hartwell's Year's Best SF, published by HarperPrism in paperback in 1996.


"The rat didn't die." Andra walked around the holostage. Before her, projected
down from the geodesic dome, shone the planet's image: Iota Pavonis Three, the
first new world approved for settlement in over four centuries. As Andra walked
around, the swirl of a mysterious continent peered out through a swathe of
cloud. She stopped, leaning forward on her elbows to watch. What name of its own
would the Free Fold Federation ultimately bestow on IP3, Andra wondered; such a
lovely, terrifying world.
"Not the last time, the rat didn't." The eyespeaker was perched on her shoulder.
It belonged to Skyhook, the sentient shuttle craft that would soon carry Andra
from the study station down to land on the new world. A reasonable arrangement:
The shuttle craft would carry the human xenobiologist through space for her
field work, then she would carry his eye on the planet surface, as she did
inside the station. "The rat only died down there the first eight times."
"Until we got its `skin' right." The "skin" was a suit of nanoplast, containing
billions of microscopic computers, designed to filter out all the local
toxins--arsenic, lanthanides, bizarre pseudoalkaloids. All were found in local
flora and fauna; inhaling them would kill a human within hours. In the old days,
planets had been terraformed for human life, like Andra's own home world
Valedon. Today they would call that ecocide. Instead, millions of humans would
be lifeshaped to live here on planet IP3, farming and building--the thought of
it made her blood race.
"We got the skin right for the rat," Skyhook's eyespeaker pointed out. "But
you're notexactly a rat."
From across the holostage, an amorphous blob of nanoplast raised a pseudopod.
"Not exactly a rat," came a voice from the nanoplast. It was the voice of Pelt,
the skinsuit that would protect Andra on the alien planet surface. "Not exactly
a rat--just about nine-tenths, I'd say. Your cell physiology is practically the
same as a rat; why, you could even take organ grafts. Only a few developmental
genes make the difference."
Andra smiled. "Thank the Spirit for a few genes. Life would be so much less
interesting."
Pelt's pseudopod wiggled. "The rat lived, and so will you. But our nanoservos
completely jammed." The microscopic nanoservos had swarmed into sample life
forms from IP3 to test their chemical structure. But for some reason they could
barely begin to send back data before they broke down. "Nobody cares about
them."
"Of course we care," Andra said quickly. Pelt never let anyone value human life
above that of sentient machines. "That's why we cut short the analysis, until we