"Charles Stross - Generation Gap" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

a sub-function of LAZ. Jerzy became my Wisdom, I became his, and as a consequence we
were unaware of certain interesting ethical paradigms.
The sensation was of a snowball melting in my stomach: of an orgasm freezing
between my thighs. I was part of something very powerful, very ignorant, with thought
processes unlike any neonate of our experience; describable by analogy. Two bodies,
clasping beneath the ruddy glow of earth.
I vaguely felt someone else joining in. It turned out that Hammurabi, Kid Frank and
Moira had eviscerated the goliath beetle with efficiency to be envied by army ants. Piet and
Pallas were too busy exploring a subjective universe of hunger, which included both
nutritional and emotional deprivation; they had given in while the rest were eating, and their
mutual secretions were lubricating the forest floor even as ours were. Afterwards they all
bussed, and Jerzy and I daisy-chained instinctively. A sevenfold hookup; an orgy.
I was very warm. As half of a command node (regular AND intermittent/dominant is a
strong combination) I began to be more than warm. I was hot. I loved it. So did Jerzy. This
was turning out better than usual. Usually after we fucked we didn't feel like networking with
each other for diurns. Here we were bussing, in monopole position... I felt a level of emotion
for him that was previously unzoned, and I'm sure he experienced something similar.
Sometime during that endless skinless time the concept occurred to us. So that's why when
we executed it we didn't know who was the origin node. I know part of it was my study of
time/survivor curves: but who could have thought of the Cannonball Express?
We came out of it, eventually. My right arm had suffered a partial circulatory collapse
where Jerzy was lying on it; he smiled dizzily at me and rolled off it. Feelings of static echoing
up and down painful nerve trunks as movement and afferent sensation returned to my
fingertips. I stood up.
"It's a beautiful view," I said, looking towards the perimeter of the dome. Jerzy stood
behind me, holding me round the waist to stabilise himself.
"Yes," he said. In front of us the dome arched upwards into the empty vacuum.
Beyond it loomed the jagged wilderness of the lunar surface, pock-marked with robotniks and
factotums. Their power lines and cold fusors gridded the airless desert off into rockfarms. In
the distance, the hyperbahn slashed across the surface like the scar of some cometary
impact. I knew that power plates lay beneath the surface of the road, that it was totally
featureless and as smooth as a Futurists personality, but still I searched for induction loops.
 Someone else wrapped an arm round my waist. It was Moira. Somewhere in the bus
she'd erased her resentment and reoriented for polymorphous eroticism. I detected an
invitation in her fingertips, but I was null to accept. Jerzy had left me drained, both of fluids
and of endorphins. Her time would come. The others arrived. We clustered together, tired,
happy, motiveless. We had a theory to test; somewhere in the business we had synergized a
formula to test out a use for my general theory of genocide. It would be invaluable in a really
major disaster, we reasoned; so it should be tested, confirmed beforehand. We needed a
very tiny disaster, really, to test it on; a disaster under controlled circumstances. We knew
that much. Collective we, the local network.
"The beetle population," suggested Piet, tastelessly, still licking his mandibular
extensions. Hammurabi shook his head.
"Would be of indefinite consequence to biome," he said, frowning. Meaning; don't you
dare! There were less than 10 EXP 5 species in dome of Armstrong City; less than 10 EXP 6
in Solspace; previously greater than 10 EXP 7 on earth, before it became Earth As We Know
It. But at least 10 EXP 2 of Armstrong City species were unique – either genedits or genuine
endangered species. The sundews, for example. There are categories of genocide, you
understand.
"Problem:" announced Kid Inkatha, throwing back his mane of silverblue fur and then