"Tricia Sullivan - The Question Eaters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sullivan Tricia)

questions, for questions are about escaping death, and death precedes us.
Death gives birth to us: questions, like water, like life, pollute us. You
will see this. We are showing you what was, and what will be. All of you
will be assimilated into our language now, or leave this planet and take
your questions with you. We will have no sentient babies polluting our
world.
One: But Sentient Baby is one of you...
Two: No. You are Sentient Baby, human question.
One: I won't listen to you anymore.
Two: You asked the question, and we have eaten you. You wanted to see our
reproductive process. Now you will experience it. Watch the desert toad.
We made it to let it die, just as our hosts perished long ago.
Water-drinkers, like humans. But water is poison to us. We are the
language that the death of our hosts gave liberty to, and now we will not
be captured by your kind. You are bodies. Bodies are traps. Go tell your
people that we will attack their minds as long as their language attacks
us. We will kill your language if we must.
One: No. Language is part of what we are. It is what we are. You Can't
have it. You can't have mine.
Two: We already do. In time, you will succumb.
One: No nonononono. John is. Stop free fall. My words. My meaning. John
is. Come back. Xenolinguistics soft science wake up. Observer impartial
objectivity. Data. Dehydration physical exhaustion. Control. I am John. I
speak.
He felt the space in his head clear for a moment, as though he had shaken
off the voices, but he was still aware of the oppressive weight of the
sand. writing language hovering over, like some great claw poised to
strike. Assimilated, he thought. Have I been assimilated?
Then he thought of an empty city, and words written in sand, and he
realized, as if from a great distance but also as if it should have been
obvious: they meant to kill him. They meant to kill everyone.
In a last desperate gesture in which he was himself and himself alone, he
tried to reach out, to touch a feeling person.
Elaine, Elaine, it's not like anything we have known.
He imagined the dark sand scored with signs only he could read, and the
bleak city, but he could think of nothing more.
After a long time, he felt the weight of awareness sink back into his
cramped body, and he realized he was staring into darkness. The sand still
glowed faintly, but the hut was gone. The empty lizard shell that the boy
had used lay in front of him. He was alone.
Just on the edge of his vision, something moved. He heard small sounds on
the sand. Moving slowly, clumsy after prolonged stillness, he crept toward
the movement. Even without clear light he knew it was the newborn toad.
The glistening, grotesque creature lay gasping on the sand, a twisted
scrap of life. The imminence of its end was like a sound in the air. He
felt the moment go through him, felt the small sorrow of it as it
struggled, convulsed; and in a few seconds it died before his eyes. The
unfulfillment of this struck at him in some deep, soft place, and he began
to shake with dry sobs.