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

intelligence of abdicated authority. Old monsters, leaving the running of worlds to children. It
served them right.
I went home. Sheila swept me up in passing through the compartment. Held me just
like a neonate. "Hello there!" she said, blue eyes glowing. One path to identify factotums; they
have no epidermal pigmentation, unlike real humans. All of them modelled on obsolete nordic
complexion; pretty, blonde, ersatz. I wonder what they think of it.
"Hello, Mom," I said, subdued in my desperate haste to reach the bathroom. I felt
grimy, sweaty, result of lying on grass and fucking. Also a bit sore. I still get that way a bit,
afterwards.
Mom – Sheila – held me, moved to arm's length, looked me in eye. "Good time, Fa?"
she asked.
"I think so," I said, and grinned back. "Need a bath."
"Uh-huh. Killing things, at your age!" She switched track abruptly. "I've invited Syrinx
for supper. Interested?" Syrinx was her lover. Only lover, long-term. So factotums don't have
lovers where you come from; then how the earth are your neonates expected to learn – from
heuristics? I nodded. "I'll be there." At a formal meal. Must arrange for Sheila and Syrinx to be
elsewhere at time of test, I decided.
She let go, shaking head distractedly, and I followed through to the water bath. (Now
I bus with the others she has time for her own life. For hooking up to her peripherals,
scattered on the surface, for making love and robots of her own. A true, inorganic life-form in
our own image. But we don't claim to be gods; as a species they are better than us. So we
made them mortal. Humans are a nasty lot at root terminus.)
I bathed in milk from an extinct species, and had myself dried by an affectionate towel
that cuddled me in all the right places and told me stories. Tall stories but true stories. I
thought for a while, flopped on a temporary bed, then pulsed LAZ for a call. Got Jerzy, on
EVA of all things. Taking hike up side of rimwall, wearing skinsuit, carrying parasol.
"What you wanting, pussy-killer?" he asked. I could see my image reflected in his
eyes, gridded over by life-support data. Serious business, walking.
"Wanting you," I said. "Got an upcoming small social, want company. For two twos.
Are you not flattered?" I waited for him to think of something. He seemed to be on interrupt
overdrive from his response.
"Flattered? I'm flattened! When, where?"
"This diurn," I said. Consulted Wisdom. "Four hours, my node. Formal dinner with
parent, parents' associate."
"Um. Can intersect. That adequate?" His eyes, wide, disingenuous, interrogated me.
"Better be! See you." I cut out and buried fists in foam bed. Maybe here, in six hours
or so. I knew I needed him. This was becoming an embarrassment. (And don't tell me that
referent is abstruse. I don't accept that; some things are universal to human experience.)
Thinking about need, I slept.
Woke to touch on shoulder. Rolled, foam surging and dissolving beneath me; it was
Sheila. She belly-flopped beside me, face to face. "Farida, please accept my humblest
apologies for waking you. I wanted to talk to you before Syrinx gets here, and you were going
to sleep right through." She lay there like a big whale, mammalian, floating. "Right, Mom," I
said. Breasts at my face against which I'd suckled until too old.
"Right," she agreed. "I haven't been seeing much of you lately. Any particular
reason?" Straight to the decision point, Mom. I yawned.
"Not really," I said. "Been with the crowd, culling landpussies, hiking, plugging. Got
someone you should meet coming, three hours minus, eat with us. Okay?"
"Uh huh." I could see her wondering, is that all? But I didn't want to know for sure
what she was thinking. It takes all the pleasure out of life to know everything. That's what's