"Anderson, Poul - Goat Song" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

УGet out! Let Me alone!Ф
УI will not let the whole world alone, Queen, until I get her back. Give me her again, and IТll believe in SUM agaimi. IТll praise It till men dance for joy to hear Its name.Ф
She challenges me with wildcat eyes. УDo you think such matters to It?Ф
УWell,Ф I shrug, Уsongs could be useful. They could help achieve the great objective sooner. Whatever that is. СOptimization of total human activityТЧ wasnТt that the program? I donТt know if it still is. SUM has been adding to Itself so long. I doubt if You Yourself understand Its purpose, Lady of Ours.Ф
УDonТt speak as if It were alive,Ф She says harshly. УIt is a computer-effector complex. Nothing more.Ф
УAre You certain?Ф
УIЧyes. It thinks, more widely and deeply than any human ever did or could; but It is not alive, not aware, It has no consciousness. That is one reason why It decided It needed Me.Ф
УBe that as it may~ Lady,Ф I tell Her, Уthe ultimate result, whatever It finally does with us, lies far in the future. At present I care about that; I worry; I resent our loss of self-determТnmnation. But thatТs because only such abstractions are left to me. Give me back my Lightfoot, and she, not the distant future, will be my concern. IТll be grateful, honestly grateful, and You Two will know it from the songs I then choose to sing. WInch, as I said, might be helpful to It.Ф
УYou are unbelievably insolent,Ф She says without force.
УNo, Lady, just desperate,Ф I say.
The ghost of a smile touches Her lips. She leans back, eyes hooded, and niurmurs, УWell, IТll take you there. What happens then, you realize, lies outside My power. My observations, My recommendations, are nothing but a few items to take into account, among billions. However. . . we have a long way to travel this night. Give me what data you think will help you, Harper.Ф
I do not finish the Lament. Nor do I dwell in any other fashion on grief. Instead, as the hours pass, I call upon those who dealt with the joy (not the fun, Iiot the short delirium, but the joy) that man and woman might once have of each other.
Knowing where we are bound, I too need such comfort.
And the night deepens, and the leagues fall behind us, and finally we are beyond habitation, beyond wihdcountry, in the land where life never comes. By crooked moon and waning starlight I see the plain of concrete and iron, the missiles and energy projectors crouched hike beasts, the robot aircraft wheeling aloft: and the lines, the relay towers, the scuttling beetle-shaped carriers, that whole transcendent nerve-blood-sinew by which SUM knows and orders the world. For all the flitting about, for all the forces which seethe, here is altogether still. The wind itself seems to have frozen to death. Hoarfrost is gray on the steel shapes. Ahead of us, tiered and mountainous, begins to appear the castle of
SUM.
She Who rides with me does not give sign of noticing that my songs have died in my throat. What humanness She showed is departing; Her face is cold and shut, Her voice bears a ring of metal. She hooks straight ahead. But She does speak to me for a little while yet:
УDo you understand what is going to happen? For the next half year I will be himiked with SUM, integral, anothier component of It. I suppose you will see Me, hut that will merely be My flesh. What speaks to you will be SUM.Ф
УI know.Ф The words must be forced forth. My coming this far is more triumph than any man in creation before me has won; and I am here to do battle for my Dancer-on-Moonglades; but nonetheless my heart shakes me, and is loud in my skull, and my sweat stink.s.
I manage, though, to add: УYou will be a part of It, Lady of Ours. That gives inc hope.Ф
For an instant She turns to me, and lays Her hand across mine, and something makes Her again so young and uritaken that I almost forget the girl who died; and she whispers, УIf you knew how I hope!Ф
The instant is gone, and I am alone among machines.
We must stop before the castle gate. The wall looms sheer above, so high and high that it seems to be toppling upon me against the westward march of the stars, so black and black that it does not only drink down every light, it radiates blindness. Challenge and response quiver on electronic bands I cannot sense. The outer-guardian parts of It have perceived a mortal aboard this craft. A missile launcher swings about to aim its three serpents at me. But the Dark Queen answersЧ She does not trouble to be peremptoryЧamid the castle opens its jaws for us.
We descend. Once, I think, we cross a river. I hear a rushing and hollow echoing and see droplets glitter where they are cast onto the viewports and outlined against dark. They vanish at once: liquid hydrogen, perhaps, to keep certain parts near absolute zero?
Much hater we stop and the canopy slides back. I rise with Her. We are in a room, or cavern, of which I can see nothing, for there is no light except a dull bluish phosphorescence which streams from every solid object, also from Her flesh and mine. But I judge the chamber is enormous, for a sound of great machines at work comes very remotely, as if heard through dream, while our own voices are swallowed up by distance. Air is pumped through, neither warm nor cold, totally without odor, a dead wind.
We descend to the floor. She stands before nie, hands crossed on breast, eyes half shut beneath the cowl and not looking at me nor away fromn me. УDo what you are told, Harper,Ф She says in a voice that has never an overtone, Уprecisely as you are told.Ф She turns and departs at an even pace. I watch Her go until I can no longer tell Her luminosity from the formless swirhings within my own eyeballs.
A claw plucks my tunic. I hook down and am surprised to see that time dwarf robot has been waiting for me this whole time. How long a time that was, I cannot tell.
Its squat form leads me in another directiomi. Weariness crawls upward through mime, my feet stumble, my lips tingle, lids are weighted and muscles have each their separate aches. Now and then I feel a jag of fear, but dully. When the robot indicates Lie down here, I am grateful.
The box fits nie well. I let various wires be attached to me, various needles be injected which lead into tubes. I pay little attemition to the machines which cluster amid murmur around me. The robot goes away. I sink into blessed darkness.
I wake renewed in body. A kind of shell seems to have grown between my forebrain and the old animal parts. Far away I can feel the horror and hear the screaming and thrashing of my instincts; but awareness is chill, calni, logical. I have also a feeling that I slept for weeks, mnonths, while leaves blew loose and snow fell on the upper world. But this may be wrong, and in no case does it matter. I am about to be judged by SUM.
The little faceless robot heads inc off, through murmurous black corridors where the dead wind blows. I unsling niy harp and clutch it to me, my sole friend and weapon. So the tranquility of the reasoning mind which has been decreed for me cannot be absolute. I decide that It simply does not want to be bothered by anguish. (No; wrong; nothing so humanhike; It has no desires; beneath that power to reason is nullity.)
At length a wall opens for us and we enter a room where She sits enthroned. The self-radiation of metal and flesh is not apparent here, for light is provided, a featureless white radiance with no apparent source. White, too, is the muted soumid of the machines which encompass Her throne. White are Her robe and face. I look away from the multitudinous unwinking scanner eyes, into Hers, but She does not appear to recognize me. Does She even see me? SUM has reached out with invisible fingers of electromagnetic induction and taken Her back into Itself. I do not tremble or sweatЧI cannotЧbut I square my shoulders, strike one phangent chord, and wait for It to speak.
It does, from sonic invisible place. I recognize the voice It has chosen to use:
my own. The overtones, the inflections are true, normal, what I myself would use in talking as one reasonable man to another. Why not? In computing what to do about me, and in programmning Itself accordingly, SUM must have used so many billion bits of information that adequate accent is a negligible subproblem.
No. . - there I am mistaken again. . . SUM does not do things on the basis that It miiight as well do them as not. This talk with myself is intended to have some effect on me. I do not know what.
УWell,Ф It says pleasantly, Уyou made quite a journey, didnТt you? IТm glad. Welcome.Ф
My instincts bare teeth to hear those words of humanity used by the unfeeling unahive. My logical mind considers replying with an ironic УThamik you,Ф decides against it, and holds me silent.
УYou see,Ф SUM continues after a moment that whirrs, Уyou are unique. Pardon Me if I speak a little bluntly. Your sexual monomania is just one aspect of a generally atavistic, superstition-oriented personality. And yet, unlike the ordinary misfit, youТre both strong and realistic enough to cope with the world. This chance to meet you, to analyze you while you rested, has opened new insights for Me on human psychophysiology. Which may head to improved techniques for governing it and its evolution.Ф
УThat being so,Ф I reply, Уgive me my reward.Ф
УNow look here,Ф SUM says in a mild tone, Уyou if anyone should know IТm not omnipotent. I was built originally to help govern a civilization grown too complex. Gradually, as My program of self-expansion progressed, I took over more and more decision-making functions. They were given to Me. People were happy to be relieved of responsibility, and they could see for themselves how much better I was running things than any mortal could. But to this day, My authority depends on a substantial consensus. If I started playing favorites, as by re-creating your girl, well, IТd have troubles.Ф
УThe consensus depends more on awe than on reason,Ф I say. УYou havenТt abolished the gods, YouТve simply absorbed them into Yourself. If You choose to pass a miracle for me, your prophet singerЧand I will be Your prophet if You do thisЧwhy, that strengthens the faith of the rest.Ф
УSo you think. But your opinions arenТt based on any exact data. The historical and anthropological records from the past before Me are unquantitative. IТve already phased theni out of the curriculum. Eventually, when the cultureТs ready for such a move, IТll order them destroyed. TheyТre too misleading. Look what theyТve done to you.Ф
I grin into the scanner eyes. УInstead,Ф I say, Уpeople will be encouraged to think that before the world was, was SUM. All right. I donТt care, as long as I get my girl back. Pass me a miracle, SUM, and IТll guarantee You a good payment.Ф
УBut I have no miracles. Not in your sense. You know how the soul works. The metal bracelet encloses a pseudovirus, a set of giant protein molecules with taps directly to the bloodstream and nervous system. They record the chromosome pattern, the symiapse flash, the permanent changes, everything. At the ownerТs death, the bracelet is dissected out. The Winged Heels bring it here, and the information contained is transferred to one of My memory banks. I can use such a record to guide the growing of a miew body in the vats: a young body, on which the former habits and recollections are imprinted. But you donТt understand the complexity of the process, Harper. It takes Me weeks, every seven years, and every available biochemical facility, to re-create My human liaison. And the process isnТt perfect, either. The pattermi is affected by storage. You might say that this body and brain you see before you remembers each death. And those are short deaths. A longer oneЧman, use your sense. Imagine.Ф
I cami; and the shield between reason and feeling begins to crack. I had sung, of my darling dead,

УNo motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees;
RollТd round in earthТs diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.Ф

Peace, at least. But if the memory-storage is not permanent but circulating; if, within those gloomy caverns of tubes and wire and outerspace cold, some remnamit of her psyche must flit and flicker, alone, unremembering, aware of nothing hut having lost lifeЧNo!
I sniite the harp amid shout so the roomn rings: УGive her back! Or IТll kill you!Ф