"Elizabeth Moon. The Speed of Dark " - читать интересную книгу автора

otherwise."
"What's all pretending otherwise? Otherwise what?" Joe Lee looks
confused as well as hurt, and I realize that I left out one of the little
pauses where a comma would be if you wrote what I said. But his confusion
alarms me-being not understood alarms me; it lasted so long when I was a
child. I feel the words tangling in my head, in my throat, and struggle to
get them out in the right order, with the right expression. Why can't
people just say what they mean, the words alone? Why do I have to fight
with tone and rate and pitch and variation?
I can feel and hear my voice going tight and mechanical. I sound angry
to myself, but what I feel is scared. "They fixed you before you were born,
Joe Lee," I say. "You never lived days-one day-like us."
"You're wrong," he says quickly, interrupting. "I'm just like you
inside, except-"
"Except what makes you different from others, what you call normal," I
say, interrupting in turn. It hurts to interrupt. Miss Finley, one of my
therapists, used to tap my hand if I interrupted. But I could not stand to
hear him going on saying things that were not true. "You could hear and
process language sounds-you learned to talk normally. You didn't have
dazzle eyes."
"Yeah, but my brain works the same way."
I shake my head. Joe Lee should know better; we've told him again and
again. The problems we have with hearing and vision and other senses aren't
in the sensory organs but in the brain. So the brain does not work the same
if someone doesn't have those problems. If we were computers, Joe Lee would
have a different main processor chip, with a different instruction set.
Even if two computers with different chips do use the same software, it
will not run the same.
"But I do the same work-"
But he doesn't. He thinks he does. Sometimes I wonder if the company
we work for thinks he does, because they have hired other Joe Lees and no
more of us, even though I know there are unemployed people like us. Joe
Lee's solutions are linear. Sometimes that's very effective, but
sometimes... I want to say that, but I can't, because he looks so angry and
upset.
"C'mon," he says. "Have supper with me, you and Cam. My treat."
I feel cold in the middle. I do not want to have supper with Joe Lee.
"Can't," Cameron says. "Got a date." He has a date with his chess
partner in Japan, I suspect. Joe Lee turns to look at me.
"Sorry," I remember to say. "I have a meeting." Sweat trickles down my
back; I hope Joe Lee doesn't ask what meeting. It's bad enough that I know
there is time for supper with Joe Lee between now and the meeting, but if I
have to lie about the meeting I will be miserable for days.

G ene Crenshaw sat in a big chair at one end of the table; Pete
Aldrin, like the others, sat in an ordinary chair along one side. Typical,
Aldrin thought. He calls meetings because he can be visibly important in
the big chair. It was the third meeting in four days, and Aldrin had stacks
of work on his desk that wasn't getting done because of these meetings. So
did the others.