"Anderson, Poul - For Love and Glory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

УMilady, I simply wish to persuade you to help persuade your father to listen to the case IТm trying to make.Ф
And that the Seafell directors will be trying to make, Lissa thought. How much of this is genuine, how much is in hopes of gaining power? Control. And how much does a desire for control spring from common sense, how much from fear of the universe?
This man seems halfway honest. Maybe more than halfway. An ideologue? A fanatic? I canТt tell. Nor am I qualified to probe his psyche, nor do I want to.
Besides, why? It isnТt important. What matters is what he maybe represents.
She shivered.
It was a faint surprise how cool her voice remained. УYou exaggerate my influence, Romon Kaspersson. As well as the meaning of that artifact. YouТre always free to contact my father, or anybody else.Ф
He scowled, УOh, yes. Theoretically. But I want him to listen, seriously listen, and then talk to his peers. You can get him to do that much, canТt you?Ф
УIf he finds merit in the idea.Ф
УItТd help, it might be critical. Can you and I talk further? Soon?Ф His tone softened. Did she hear a sigh? УThe voyage wonТt last much longer.Ф
Thanks be, Lissa thought.
And yetЧ She was a Windholm. That carried an obligation to do what she could whenever it seemed needful. A small enough [48] return for the wealth and privilege to which she was born. Not that this business looked sunshaking. But it could be an early sign of something larger.
Be that as it mightЧУIf you want. Within reason. Not right now, please. IТd like to rest a while.Ф She escaped to her cabin.
Actually, the encounters afterward werenТt so bad. They were only occasional, and only in the course of a few ship-days. He spoke mildly, often smiling, and indeed tried to shift them into more personal conversation. She found she could divert that by asking him to explain the classical quotations he threw in, whether or not she recognized them. They were apt to be lyrical, even tender. Their authors, historical backgrounds, and whatever else she could get him to tell her about them used up time. He wasnТt a scholar or anything like that; however, his tastes surprised her a little by their depth and frequent delicacy.
What waited for her when she came home scattered all of it into the far corners of her mind.
IX
COMING out of hyperjump and moving inward through the Solar System, Torsten HeboТs little ship chanced to pass near enough to the Enigma that it showed as a star-twinkle in a viewscreen. HeТd heard about this construct, orbited in the asteroid belt a couple of centuries ago. Curious, he magnified the image and amplified the light, until the thing should have been plain to his eyes. It still wasnТt. A bewildering geometry ofЧwhat, slender girders and braces, complexly curved?Чsurrounded a core of ever-changeable, softly opalescent glow. No more identifiable now than it was in pictures heТd seen, taken by other visitors and released on the interstellar communication webs.
Not a secret. Merely incomprehensible. Earth didnТt issue news releases, but the questions of outsiders got polite, if rather brief and formal, answers. This was an instrumentality for fundamental research. That alone had, at first, been startling enough. WerenТt the basic equations of physics written down several hundred years ago? Well, maybe there really was more to be discovered. Unfortunately, said the responses, the principles behind this thing were not explainable, in any meaningful sense of the word, to any organic brainЧincluding unreinforced Earth-humanЧor any artificial intelligence developed on any other planet. Whatever the results of its investigations, they would be made as public as possible.
The rest was silence.
Well, Hebo thought, I suppose theyТre working on it yet, and maybe getting nowhere. And maybe I ought to resent the claim that I and every organic being, human or nonhuman, havenТt the [50] brains to understand whatТs going on. But, hell, the universe is full of things I canТt understand, like women or affine geometry or Arzethian politics, and so what? My ego isnТt tied that hard to my intellect.
It is kind of eerie, though, that Earth seems to be the only planet that everybody thinks of as speaking with a single voice, like a single entity.
The Enigma passed from view, and soon into the bottom of his mind. After all, knocking about in space, heТd encountered plenty of different weirdnesses. And ahead of him was no threat but, he hoped, release and renewal.
He turned his attention to the waxing radiance ahead and presently its silvery companion. It seemed to take a long while, and then it seemed to have taken almost no time, before he was there.
Seen from the outside, Earth had changed little since the last few of his visits. The same white-marbled blue beauty shone athwart crystalline darkness, bearing the same heraldry of continents. The polar caps kept their same modest size, a few dun spots of desert remained, no city lights clustered and sprawled across the nighted side. Fewer solar-power collection fields glimmered on the moon, but heТd known about that change. Information did diffuse starward, news, images, borne more by transients than by direct communication, and less and less often, but apparently nothing kept deliberately secret. Apparently. Maybe, he thought again, it was just that nothing much was going on anymore that his kind of people could follow.
Procedures for approach, orbiting, descent, and such-like matters had certainly gotten streamlined. He especially appreciated not having to lie several hours abed while nanoprobes swarmed through him checking for pathogens; now a scanner did the job in about one minute. Nevertheless, the feeling of being moved along in a huge, smooth-running machine was unexpectedly lonesome.
A robotic flitter set him and his meager baggage down at one [51] of the two hostels kept for humans from outside. The rest had gradually been shut down as demand for them dwindled. HeТd picked the one on Oahu, mostly because heТd been recalling youthful daysЧhis first youthЧsailing a knockabout around among the Islands and beachcombing on them with a delightful young woman.
Whatever became of her? Had he been a fool to lose touch? Or, he wondered, had wistful memory colored those days brighter than theyТd really been and put in happenings that never really happened? He couldnТt bring her name to mind.
From the air, heТd seen that Honolulu and the other cities were completely gone. A few low, sleek buildings lay scattered amidst gardens and stands of tropical wildwood. But beyond Diamond Head, Hanauma Bay was about the same as ever and the diving was, if anything, better now when he had it to himself and the coral had been so well rehabilitated. Some congenial company would have been nice, though. He walked back up to the hostel in a mood less happy than the scenery deserved.
It affected an ancient style. That made sense. What its guests chiefly had in common was the history of this world before their forbearsЧor, in a few cases like his, they themselvesЧdeparted. When Hebo came down from his room casually dressed for a drink before dinner, he was shown to a covered deck open to the breezes and the sight of sea and cliffs. A bewildering richness of birds soared, dipped, and cried. HeТd heard that some were of native species long extinct, recreated on the basis of records equally old.
The drink was served by an unobtrusive machine. The food, when it came, was good but nothing he recognized; a really first-chop wine came with it. Still, he was glad when another man appeared, and invited him to his table.
Seiichi Okuma spoke no language Hebo could handle. The servitor brought a translator and they were soon in conversation. The other man turned out to be from Akiko, in the Beta Centauri region, which was somewhat off HeboТs usual beat. He was here [52] as part of a small team ofЧanthropologists? His fellows were currently scattered over the globe. Their sponsors hoped they could gain a somewhat better understanding of present-day Earth, experiencing its life in more detail and with less predictability than verbals, visuals, and virtuals offered.
УAnd howТve you been doing?Ф Hebo asked.
УNone of us are sure yet,Ф Okuma admitted, Уbut already itТs rather discouraging. We knew, of course, the human population is down to only about fifty million. ThatТs anomalous enough. But I, at least, I had not guessed how remote that population has become.Ф
УPeople arenТt friendly?Ф
The question was of more than academic interest to Hebo. He hadnТt yet spoken at any length with anyone but a space traffic control officer, and that was by beamphone and she was modified-humanЧnot ugly, but not his type. Her words had been polite, no more. HeТd wondered why she cared to do something so routine, when it could easily and more efficiently be cybered. Maybe fleeting encounters with yokels like him amused her. As for the utility of it, he supposed a live person was meant as a courtesy to newcomers.
Unless, of course, she too was a virtual.
УOh, those I have sought out have been ready enough to talk, if not very forthcoming,Ф Okuma said. УSome have actually extended hospitality of an austere sort. But I have never felt their attention was really on me.Ф
УMost of their awareness in linkage.Ф A slight shiver passed through Hebo. УThe world-mind. Yeah.Ф
Okuma shook his head. УThat is a misnomer. It isЧforgive me, sirЧa common misconception. My group had learned that much beforehand. Consciousness on EarthЧhuman, parahuman, quantum-netЧis not joined in one entity. Relationships are more subtle and changeable than that.Ф
УI know, I know. Sort of, anyway. IТm just not sure how far the business has, uh, evolved.Ф
[53] УThat is a major part of what we are trying to discover. I suspect increasingly that weТll get answers we cannot quite comprehend.Ф
Okuma paused. Surf beyond the reefs murmured, wind whispered, bird-cries began to die away as the sun went low.
УIn a sense,Ф he mused, Уwe who live among the stars, we whose ancestors moved there and founded what they imagined were new societies, are the relics, the archaic life-forms. We remain in our old human ways because we are suited to them. Longevity, rejuvenation, reinforces this basic conservatism, but our children grow into it likewise. Ours is, after all, a rich, infinitely diverse and exciting environmentЧfrom the old human viewpoint. But so, no doubt, is yonder sea to the sharks in it. They have scarcely changed for many millions of years. Yet for the past millennium, they have survived on human sufferance.Ф
УHey!Ф exclaimed Hebo. УYou donТt mean weТre in that situation?Ф
УNo, no, not precisely. Earth poses no threat to us. The life on it, including the synthetic and machine life, has passed us by. It has other interests than spreading out into a material universe.Ф
Hebo relaxed. УWell, maybe thatТs how it sees the matter. But look, why hasnТt the same development overtakenЧor transfigured, or whatever word you wantЧany nonhumans?Ф
УThey are too unlike us. You probably know better than I how vastly their psychologies, instincts, drives, capabilities differ from ours, and from each otherТs. Please correct me if IТm mistaken, but I think we interact with them, and they with us, only on a rather superficial level. Partnership is possible between human and alien, yes. Sometimes even what the human feels as friendship. But how does the alien feel it? That may be ultimately unknowable, on either side.Ф
Hebo rubbed his chin. УM-m, yes, in a way I have to agree. Kind of like aЧa falcon and a dog. Men used to hunt with them.Ф
OkumaТs eyes widened. УIndeed? When?Ф
[54] УBefore my time. But I do go far enough back toТve read about it and seen historical shows.Ф
УFascinating,Ф the scientist breathed. УAs, I am sure, is all of your long experience.Ф