"Brin, David - Natulife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

DAVID BRIN

NATULIFE

I KNOW, THINGS TASTE BETTER fresh, not packaged. Hamburger clots your arteries
and hurts the rain forest. We should eat like our stone age ancestors, who dug
roots, got lots of exercise, and always stayed a little hungry. So they say.

Still, I balked when my wife served me termites.

"Come on, sweetheart. Try one. They're delicious."

Gaia already had the hive uncrated and set up by the time I came home. Putting
down my briefcase, I stared at hundreds of the pasty-colored critters scrabbling
under a plastic cover, tending their fat queen, devouring kitchen trimmings,
making themselves right at home in my home.

Gaia offered me a probe made of fine-grained pseudowood. "See? You use this
stick to fish after nice plump ones, like chimpanzees do in the wild!"

I gaped at the insect habitat, filling the last free space between our
veggiehydrator and the meat-sublimate racks. "But . . . we agreed. Our
apartment's too small . . . "

"Oh, sweety, I know you'll just love them. Anyway, don't I need protein and
vitamins for the baby?"

Putting my hand over her swelling belly normally softened any objections I might
have. Only this time my own stomach was in rebellion. "I thought you already got
all that stuff from the Yeast-Beast machine." I pointed to the vat occupying
half of our guest bathroom, venting nutritious vapors from racks of tissue-grown
cutlets.

"That stuff's not natural," Gaia complained with a moue. "Come on, try the real
thing. It's just like they show on the NatuLife Channel!"

"I . . . don't think . . . "

"Watch, I'll show you!"

Gaia passed the stick-probe through a sealed hatch to delve after six-legged
prey, her tongue popping out as she concentrated, quivering with excitement from
her red ponytail down to her rounded belly. "Got one!" she cried, drawing a
twitching insect out the hatch and to her lips.

"You're not seriously . . . " My throat stopped as the termite vanished, head
first.