"Charles Stross - Duat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

stop patronizing me now. You know exactly what this unpleasantness is all about."

"I see that you've been got at," said the Boss, in a tone of mild irritation.

"You've been lying to me all along," accused Oshi. "Economical with the truth."

"Well yes, of course. But would you have wanted it any other way? I had to make a lot of
hard choices, you know. And what is hard for me, might well prove impossible for a mere
human. Yours not to wonder why, etcetera."

"But why?" She was puzzled, adrift in a sea of truth and consequences. "You didn't need
to. You could have programmed us. Used drones, cyborgs. You're a Superbright. I thought
you could do that sort of thing?"

"Of course. But that begs the question. Or don't you really want to know the truth?"

"Yes." It slipped out before she could bite her tongue. The Boss stopped smiling.

"Damnation. I really hoped you had more intelligence than that. A stronger instinct for
self-preservation. I suppose I shall have to tell you everything, now. Such a shame I'll


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2: In the Duat

have to kill you afterwards."

"Try me." Oshi slipped into combat-mode, pattern sensors in her neocortex boosting her
awareness of her surroundings on a surge of adrenalin: "Cut the crap and tell me the
truth!"

The Boss frowned, face like a distant hurricane: "Indeed!" A vast bolus of information
battered at her wisdom interface. She tried to dodge, to shut it out with countermeasures
designed to defend her sanity, but she was too late: the Boss, after all, had invested her
with these defenses -- and who better to know how to overcome them? A whining storm
of data ran red-hot wires through her ears. Something vast and amorphous began to
download itself into her wisdom cache, swamping everything else in a monstrous roar of
data. Transcievers capable of digitizing an entire human mind and uploading it within
seconds of death went into overload as they fielded the enormous infodump. " Now,"
rumbled the Boss. "Tell me you want to know the truth. Small foolish primate. Harumph!"

But Oshi wasn't answering, then or soon thereafter. She was trying to make sense of the
accessible mass of information that the Boss had dumped into her. Not just an
explanation, but whole strategies for understanding:

The galaxy wasn't always like this. There was a time when human beings were more
important than they are today. Look back, if you will, and try to imagine what it must
have been like to be the dominant species. No, you don't need to curse at me: it won't do
any good. Anyway, all this happened long ago ...