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

- SUM finds it expedient to chuckle; and, horribly, the smile is reflected for a moment on the Dark QueenТs hips, though otherwise She never stirs. УAnd how do you propose to do that?Ф It asks me.
It knows, I know, what I have in mind, so I counter: УHow do You propose to stop me?Ф
УNo need. YouТll be considered a nuisance. Finally someone will decide you ought to have psychiatric treatment. TheyТll query My diagnostic outlet. IТll recommend certain excisions.Ф
УOn the other hand, since YouТve sifted mny mind by miow, and since You know how IТve affected people with my songsЧeven the Lady yonder, even HerЧ wouldnТt you rather have me working for You? With words like, С0 taste, and see, how gracious the Lord is; blessed is the man that trusteth in him. 0 fear the Lord, ye that are his saints; for they that fear him lack nothing.Т I can make You into God.Ф
УIn a sense, I already ani God.Ф
УAnd in another sense not. Not yet.Ф I can endure no more. УWhy are we arguing? You made Your decision before I woke. Tell me and let me go!Ф
With an odd carefulness, SUM responds: УIТm still studying you. No harm in admitting to you, My knowledge of the human psyche is as yet iniperfeet. Certain areas wonТt yield to computation. I donТt know precisely what youТd do, Harper. If to that uncertaimity I added a potentially dangerous precedentЧФ
УKill me, then.Ф Let my ghost wander forever with hers, down in Your cryogenie dreams.
УNo, thatТs also inexpedient. YouТve mnade yourself too conspicuous and controversial. Too many people know by now that you went off with the Lady.Ф Is it possible that, behind steel and energy, a nonexistent hand brushes across a shadow face in puzzlement? My heartbeat is thick in the silence.
Suddenly It shakes nie with decision: УThe calculated probabilities do favor your keeping your promises and making yourself useful. Therefore I shall grant your request. HoweverЧФ
I am on my kmiees. My forehead knocks on the floor until blood rumis into my e\es. I hear through storm winds:
УЧtesting must continue. Your faith in Me is not absolute; in fact, youТre very skeptical of what you call My goodness. Without additional proof of your willingness to trust Me, I canТt let you have the kind of importance which your getting your dead back fromn Me would give you. Do you understand?Ф
The question does not sound rhetorical. УYes,Ф I sob.
УWell, then,Ф says my civilized, almost amiable voice, УI computed that youТd react much as you have done, and prepared for the likelihood. Your womanТs body was re-created while you hay under study. The data which make personality are now being fed back into her neurones. SheТll be ready to leave this place by the time you do.
УI repeat, though, there has to be a testing. The prdcedure is also necessary for its effect on you. If youТre to be My prophet, youТll have to work pretty closely with Me; youТll have to undergo a great deal of reconditioning; this night we begin the process. Are you willing?Ф
УYes, yes, yes, what must I do?Ф
УOnly this: Follow the robot out. At some point, she, your woman, will join you. SheТll be conditioned to walk so quietly you canТt hear her. DonТt hook back. Not once, until youТre in the upper world. A single glance behind you will be an act of rebellion against Me, and a datuni indicating you canТt really be trusted
and that ends everything. Do you understand?Ф
УIs that all?Ф I cry. УNothing more?Ф
УIt will prove more difficult than you think,Ф SUM tells me. My voice fades, as if into illimitable distamices: УFarewell, worshipper.Ф
The robot raises me to my feet, I stretch out my arms to the Dark Queen. Half blinded with tears, I nonetheless see that She does not see me. УGoodbye,Ф I mumble, and let the robot lead inc away.
Our walking is long through those inirk miles. At first I am in too much of a turmoil, and hater too stunned, to know where or how we are bound. But later still, slowly, I become aware of my flesh and clothes and the robotТs alloy, glimmering blue in blackness. Sounds and smells are muffled; rarely does another machine pass by, unheeding of us. (What work does SUM have for themn?) I am so careful not to look behind me that my neck grows stiff.
Though it is not prohibited, is it, to lift my harp past my shoulder, in the course of strumming a few melodies to keep up my courage, and see if perchance a following illumination is reflected in this polished wood?
Nothing. Well, her second birth must take timeЧO SUM, be careful of her!Ч and then she must be led through many tunnels, no doubt, before she makes rendezvous with my back. Be patient, Harper.
Sing. Welcome her home. No, these hollow spaces swallow all music; and she is as yet in that trance of death from which only the sun and my kiss can wake her; if, indeed, she has joined me yet. I listen for other footfalls than my own.
Surely we havenТt much farther to go. I ask the robot, but of course I get no reply. Make an estimate. I know about how fast the chariot traveled coming down. . . . The trouble is, time does not exist here. I have no day, no stars, no clock but my heartbeat, and I have host the count of that. Nevertheless, we must come to the end soon. What purpose would be served by walking me through this labyrinth till I die?
Well, if I ani totally exhausted at the outer gate, I wonТt make undue trouble when I find no Rose-in-Hand behind me.
No, now thatТs ridiculous. If SUM didnТt want to heed my plea, It need merely say so. I have no power to inflict physical damage on Its parts.
Of course, It nnght have plans for me. It did speak of reconditioning. A series of shocks, culminating in that last one, could make me ready for whatever kind of gelding It intends to do.
Or It might have changed Its mind. Why now? It was quite frank about an uncertainty factor in the human psyche. It may have reevaluated the probabilities and decided: better not to serve my desire.
Or It may have tried, and failed. It admitted the recording process is imperfect. I must not expect quite the Gladness I knew; she will always be a little haunted. At best. But suppose the tank spawned a body with no awareness behind the eyes? Or a monster? Suppose, at this instant, I am being followed by a half-rotten corpse?
No! Stop that! SUM would know, and take corrective measures.
Would It? Can It?
I comprehend how this passage through night, where I never look to see what follows me, how this is an act of submission and confession. I am saying, with my whole existent being, that SUM is all-powerful, all-wise, all-good. To SUM I offer the love I came to win back. Oh, It looked more deeply into me than ever I did myself.
But I shall not fail.
Will SUM, though? If there has indeed been some grisly error . . . let me not find it out under the sky. Let her, my only, not. For what then shall we do? Could I lead her here again, knock on the iron gate, and cry, УMaster, You have given me a thing unfit to exist. Destroy it and start over.ФЧ? For what might the wrongness be? Something so subtle, so pervasive, that it does not show in any way save my slow, resisted discovery that I embrace a zombie? DoesnТt it make better sense to lookЧmake certain while she is yet drowsy with deathЧ use the whole power of SUM to correct what may be awry?
No, SUM wants me to believe that It makes no mistakes. I agreed to that price. And to much else.. . I donТt know how much else, I am daunted to imagine, but that word УreconditionФ is ugly Does not my woman have some rights in the matter too? Shall we not at least ask her if she wants to be the wife of a prophet; shall we not, hand in hand, ask SUM what the price of her life is to her?
Was that a footfall? Almost, I whirl about. I check myself and stand shaking; names of hers break from my lips. The robot urges me on.
Imagination. It wasnТt her step. I am alone. I will always be alone.
The halls wind upward. Or so I think; I have grown too weary for much kinesthetic sense. We cross the sounding river and I am bitten to the bone by the cold which blows upward around the bridge, and I may not turn about to offer the naked newborn woman my garment. I lurch through endless chambers where machines do meaningless things. She hasnТt seen them before. Into what nightmare has she risen; and why donТt I, who wept into her dying sense that I loved her, why donТt I look at her, why donТt I speak?
Well, I could talk to her. I could assure the puzzled mute dead that I have come to lead her back into sunlight. Could I not? I ask the robot. It does not reply. I cannot remember if I may speak to her. If indeed I was ever told. I stumble forward.
I crash into a wall and fall bruised. The robotТs claw closes on my shoulder. Another arm gestures. I see a passageway, very long and narrow, through the stone. I will have to crawl through. At the end, at the end, the door is swinging wide. The dear real dusk of Earth pours through into this darkness. I am blinded and deafened.
Do I hear her cry out? Was that the final testing; or was my own sick, shaken mind betraying me; is there a destiny which, like SUM with us, makes tools of
suns and SUM? I donТt know. I know only that I turned, and there she stood. Her hair flowed long, loose, past the remembered face from which the trance was just departing, on which the knowing and the hove of me had just awakenedЧflowed down over the body that reached forth arms, that took one step to nieet me and was halted.
The great grim robot at her own back takes her to it. I think it sends lightning through her brain. She falls. It bears her away.
My guide ignores mny screaming. Irresistible, it thrusts me out through the tunnel. The door clangs in my face. I stand before the wall which is like a mountain. Dry snow hisses across concrete. The sky is bloody with dawn; stars still gleam in the west, and arc lights are scattered over the twihit plain of the mnachines.
Presently I go dumb. I become almost calni. What is there heft to have feelings about? The door is iron, the wall is stone fused into one basaltic niass. I walk some distance off into the wind, turn around, lower my head, and charge. Let my brains be smeared across Its gate; the pattern will be my hieroglyphic for hatred.
I amn seized from behind. The force that stops me must needs be bruisinghy great. Released, I crumple to the ground before a machine with talons and wings. My voice from it says, УNot here. IТll carry you to a safe place.Ф
УWhat more can You do to me?Ф I croak.
УRelease you. You wonТt be restrained or molested on any orders of Mine.Ф