"Anderson, Poul - Explorationsl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

Joel and Mary were on their honeymoon when he told her of his wish.

Astronauts and ranking engineers could afford to go where air and water were clean, trees grew instead of walls, birdsong resounded instead of traffic, and one's fellow man was sufficiently remote that one could feel benign toward him. Doubtless that was among the reasons why politicians got re-elected by gnawing at the space program.

This evening the west was a fountain of gold above a sea which far out shimmered purple, then broke upon the sands in white thunder. Behind, palms made traces on a blue where Jupiter had kindled. The air was mild, astir with odors of salt and jasmine.

They stood, arms around each other's waists, her head leaned against him, and watched the sun leave. But when he told her, she stepped from him and he saw terror.

"Hey, what's wrong, darling?" He seized her hands.

"No," she said. "You mustn't."

"What? Why ever not? You're working for it too!"

The sky-glow caught tears. "For somebody else to go, that's fine. It, it'd be like winning a war-a just war, a triumph-when somebody else's man got to do the dying. Not you," she pleaded.

"But... good Lord," he tried to laugh, "it won't be me, worse luck. My satisfaction will be strictly vicarious. Supposing I'm accepted, what do I sacrifice? Some time under a scanner; a few cells for chromosome templates. Why in the cosmos should you care?"

"I don't know. It'd be... oh, I never thought about it before, never realized the thing might strike home like this-" She swallowed. "I guess it's ... I'd think, there's a Joel, locked for the rest of his existence inside a machine ... and there's a Joel in the flesh, dying some gruesome death, or marooned forever."

Silence passed before he replied, slowly: "Why not think, instead, there's a Joel who's glad to pay the price and take the risk-" he let her go and swept a gesture around heaven-"for the sake of getting out yonder?"

She bit her lip. "He'd even abandon his wife."

"I hoped you'd apply also."

"No. I couldn't face it. I'm too much a, an Earth-ling. This is all too dear to me."

"Do you suppose I don't care for it? Or for you?" He drew her to him.

They were quite alone. On grass above the strand, they won to joy again.

"After all," he said later, "the question won't get serious for years and years."

I don't come back fast. They can't just ram a lifetime into a new body. That's the first real thought I have, as I drift from a cave where voices echoed on and on, and then slowly lights appeared, images, whole scenes, my touch on a control board, Dad lifting me to his shoulder which is way up in the sky, leaves above a brown secret pool, Mary's hair tickling my nose, a boy who stands on his head in the schoolyard, a rocket blastoff that shakes my bones with its sound and light, Mother giving me a fresh-baked ginger cookie, Mother laid out dead and the awful strangeness of her and Mary holding my hand very tight, Mary, Mary, Mary.

No, that's not her voice, it's another woman's, whose, yes, Korene's, and I'm being stroked and cuddled more gently than I ever knew could be. I blink to full consciousness, free-fall afloat in the arms of a robot.

"Joel," she murmurs. "Welcome."

It crashes in on me. No matter the slow awakening: suddenly this. I've taken the anesthetic before they wheel me to the scanner, I'm drowsing dizzily off, then now I have no weight, metal and machinery cram everywhere in around me, those are not eyes I look into but glowing optical sensors, "Oh, my God," I say, "it happened to me."

This me. Only I'm Joel! Exactly Joel, nobody else.

I stare down the nude length of my body and know that's not true. The sears, the paunch, the white hairs here and there on the chest are gone. I'm smooth, twenty years in age, though with half a century inside me. I snap after breath.

"Be calm," says Korene.

And the ship speaks with my voice: "Hi, there. Take it easy, pal. You've got a lot of treatment and exercise ahead, you know, before you're ready for action."