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

The Boss keeps the knife pointed at me. It's a stand-off: the knife is powered up, liable to cut through
metal like tissue. If it gets loose in here it could take out half the ship's control systems before I could
catch it. More importantly, it will certainly break the Dreamtime pipe, destroying millions of minds in
upload.

"When did you take her?"

"Earlier than you thought. Not in the medicentre -- that was just a meat puppet. I must say I am
disappointed in you, my dear. Even the tapeworm was smart enough to see how you could be
manipulated. No: I laid the groundwork earlier, in the Necropolis. But I only moved house, as it were,
recently: when she downloaded. Flesh is frail, is it not? I think she may even have thought it was her own
idea. Would you like to ask her?"

I don't move. I don't trust myself to speak.

The Boss adds, just a little petulantly: "I'm doing this for your own good."
"Let me be the judge of that," I say. Calm is a small bird fluttering within my ribs. Everything is red and
grainy, shadows long and huge. A great tearing fills my head, raw data seething through the coopted
wisdom channels on its way to the downlink into the berserker expansion space. A waterfall of memes,
filling the hollow head. I remember Dragulic, the front door bursting open. I remember the castle, a face
crumbling under my fingers. Laughing, loving. My uncle, preparing to cut, a mockery of a smile. Trust me
.

"Won't you let me go?" Raisa asks in a small voice: I can tell it's her, not the Boss. "I'll do anything you
want --"

Her face warps again. "No. You'll just change your mind."

I shudder. I see Raisa go limp in his grip. Red-out anger. " Why?" I demand.

"Why anything?" He sounds almost amused by my presumption in questioning him. "I exist. You exist.
Isn't that enough for you? Little monkey, you are a fool. You think about betrayal, but you could never
betray me. I've been two steps ahead of you all along. Your little contrivances, your thought-experiments
with treachery, serve to impress no-one. Your resolution to learn who you are, to lead an independent
life, all wavers at the first offer of a warm bed and an empty mind. You do not have what it takes to
understand this universe, Oshi. Leave destiny to the real intellects, and go pick fleas from your simian
partners! I'd be doing you a favour if I --" the knife blade twitches.

I shiver hot and cold, but nothing much happens. Am I dealing with a psychopath? This is the Boss -- but
without the cool, unsympathetic intellect. He's a pale shadow leering out of Raisa's stolen face. Then the
shadow fades from view for a moment. Raisa looks at me with her own eyes, then sideways, at the
corpse floating open-throated near the centre of the room. "He's mad, Oshi. Think what you will about
me but I couldn't ..." She stops.

I try to breathe: "Let her go. Times change. The outside ... we don't know what's going on, Boss. These
may be the only human survivors left. You need them, need us. If this works, if we succeed --"

"It won't." The hateful face is back. I wouldn't have believed how alien the same skin, same muscle could
look with a different occupant behind it. I think I know what is happening, and I would gladly die rather
than participate, but there's no way out. "The monkeys have stolen the tool of their betters. If you