"Babylon 5 - The Nautilus Coil - J Gregory Keyes (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Babylon 5)

"In a sense. The Vorlons created us -- created telepaths."

"I know. I was there, remember, when Byron went off the deep end, tried to
blackmail the InterStellar Alliance, held all of us somehow accountable for
what the collective Koshs did? That's not the big secret I'm supposed to
keep, is it?"

"No. But there was more. When Byron found out ..." she suddenly,
unaccountably blushed, and stopped, only to begin again, speaking more
quickly. "Like you said, when he found out, he reacted badly. But you don't
know how it {/feels,/} Michael, to suddenly realize that your entire
existence was contrived, that you are nothing but a tool."

Garibaldi rolled his eyes. "Lyta, Bester programmed me to turn one of my
best friends over to be tortured and killed. Are you really gonna tell me
that's somehow less immediate than knowing your God-knows-how-many great
grandma was given some kind of telepath vitamin supplements 200 years ago?"

This time her face actually registered chagrin, that she had made a mistake.
It was gratifying.

"Point taken," she allowed. "But Byron reacted badly. It hit him dead
centre. So I didn't tell him {/everything/} I learned when I was with the
Vorlons."

"But you're going to tell me?"

"I have to."

"It's just like Christmas."

She looked away. "The Shadows came early. The Vorlons never finished us."

"Never ... Oh, my God."

"Yeah. I'm not sure exactly how they did it, but I've pieced together how I
think it may have happened. I think they started a long time ago, maybe
thousands or even a million years ago. They took some of us ... or maybe just
cells to clone us from, I'm not sure ... and they tinkered with us, bred us
somewhere offworld. Now and then they would come back to Earth -- and Minbar,
and Narn, and all of the other worlds where they created teeps -- and insert
a new genetic sequence into the home populations. They worked slowly -- the
Vorlons live a long time, and an experiment that stretches over centuries
doesn't seem strange to them.

"Sometime in the late 21st century, they crossed a threshold, and not long
after that the first obvious teeps started showing up on Earth. It happened
earlier on other worlds, but it happened better on Earth. We were their pride
and joy. But I still got the impression that, as we are, we were maybe a
third step in a five-step plan."