"Broderick, Damien - The Dreaming (The Dreaming Dragons)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Broderick Damien)
Ironically Bill asked: 'To conquer the world?' But his mind presented the loathsome image of a giant snake coiled on a throne, an image from childhood, gorged on human meat, red eyes gleaming in the dark with dreadful intelligence.
'Or to set us free from ignorance and want,' General Sevastyianov said ponderously. 'As your horror story writers have never understood, it is certain that the more complexly evolved a species and its material culture the more generous and humane its members will be. And one must expect star folk to be highly evolved.'
'With nuclear weapons,' Lowenthal muttered cynically, 'and Gulag galaxies.'
'Perhaps the aggressors have destroyed themselves in the interim.'
A band seemed to be tightening around Bill's forehead, white haze of gauze moving in slow waves over his visual field. They want me to go in there, he told himself. I won't do it. They must be insane. With as much false briskness as he could muster, he leaned on the table and said: 'I take it the fourteen-year-old is the sole key you've found to date. Are there any testable indices that account for his immunity to the field?'
Major Northcote, the chief MO, said: 'There's nothing useful. The kid's been tested from hell to breakfast. He's a mess, but he was a mess before he went in. We have two facts. He was functionally almost totally aphasic. Now he babbles like a tape-recorder let loose inside the Library of Congress. And his presence in the Zone somehow saved his uncle from permanent psychosis.'
'Other than that,' Hugh Lapp added, 'semantic analysis of his verbal and written reports suggests that he has become a conduit from the hypothetical Vault intelligence to us.'
'Sophomore sophistry,' Lowenthal said. He opened the folder in front of him, flicked out several sheets of pale green paper. 'If you wish to be edified by our spirit guide, delFord, I suggest you study these transcripts. Let's go back to the first interview with Northcote:
'"However much techno-environmental factors are determinants of behaviour, the relationship between human beings and their environment and technology is mediated by their ideas and beliefs about themselves, their fellows and indeed, the universe itself. Myrna? Hello, is that -- We seem to have a crossed -- Appears to be little profit in it because the essential task of theory building here is not to codify abstract regularities -- Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it ... not to generalise across cases but to generalise within them."'
Thunderstruck, Bill said: 'And you don't find that significant, Harris? An aphasic fourteen-year-old -- '
'Most of it,' the psychologist stated dismissively, 'is straight quotation from Clifford Geertz's _The Interpretation of Cultures_. The child's guardian, as you might have noticed, is an anthropologist. Let's go on:
'"Viewing schizophrenia as a phenomenon of interaction within a given family makes the circumstances intelligible. Ill-advised attempts to transpose this emic apprehension into a systematic set of principles, as Laing himself did, results only in a parody of the etic approach he initially found inadequate." We haven't been able to trace that, but it's almost certainly the residue of some overheard conversation. Does it sound like a communication from interstellar aliens to you, Dr delFord?'
Bill had found his own copy of the green transcript, and his eyes sped down the neatly typed columns in pure astonishment. He put a mint in his mouth. 'He's talking about empathy,' he said distantly. 'My God.'
An italicised comment glossed: _The following two paragraphs are from Nigel Calder's 'The Life Game', 1973, p. 130_.
All too little is known, though, about why particular species or groups of species die out. New species may be in some respects "better" in the prevailing environment, but speculations about the genetic deterioration of the dying species turn out to be wide of the mark. For example, it was said that animals living a long time in a stable environment would narrow down the choice of alternative genes available in their populations, thus forfeiting all capacity for evolving once circumstances changed. This simply does not happen.
Animals living on the ocean floor, at depths of more the 1000 metres, experience as constant an environment as any on earth, yet they possess just as much genetic variability as species living in shallow water on land.
With high excitement, he took a thick pink bundle from the folder. This was headed: _Unedited copy of material written with great speed in pencil, Dec. 14_.
'life of body social likened to life of social body as organism springs from heredity and environment working jointly and separately thru mech of genetic determination and ecological adaptation so social group [two lines unintelligible] social noosphere like unto genes specifying poss of individual within inhibitory selective influence of phys environ social innovation and choice akin to mutation and creative adaptation permitting breach of rules of universe of discourse bounded by prevailing order thus social phenotype mutable under influence of individual genotype and individ phenotype sculpted by changing social genotype while influence of mutation governed by control mech insects more phylogenetically stable than mammals cf societies capacity to permit polymorphic and polytypic variation itself element of social genotype in turn mutable in different degrees vector of prevailing level of immunity vigour of world 3 mutagenic agent metasocial environ in crisis culls ill adapted social genotype in favour of lowlevel now viable line viability of mutagens and social immune rejection systems restraining them cf clonal inhibition of disease immunity secured by exposure of young to dead ideas'
Jesus, he thought. This is no _tour de force_ of mnemonics. Fedorenko is right. The kid's a conduit, a leaking valve. From what? Not some alien presence in the Vault. The others, here, on the Project? The collective unconscious? And the child is telling us something, he knew with enormous certainty.
Out-of-body-experience, Bill thought. That soaring moment of cosmic awareness, the light, the terrible disjuncture from the body's limitations. Somehow the gluon shield triggered it. Somehow the Vault's defensive Zone works some still more radical breach. And drives men mad. Unless, he realised, the intruder is already without barriers, lacking ego boundaries. Fearfully, he thought: Like the autistic boy, Hieronymus Dean.
Sevastyianov rapped on the table, bringing them to order. 'Gentlemen, I think any remaining items on the agenda can wait until after luncheon. Thank you.' He gestured to delFord. 'I would like you to see the boy now, Doctor,' he said in a tone which did not carry to the others straggling from the conference room. 'I find your approach refreshing, delFord. To be candid, your colleague Dr Lowenthal gives me a pain in the ass.'
Bill laughed aloud. He knew it was true, but he hadn't expected to hear it. If he'd been wearing a uniform things might have been different. Or would they? Civilians were shit, weren't they?
'I appreciate it, General.'
--------
*7. Uluru*
Although it was termed a dining room, the place was undeniably the officers' mess. Carpet softened the floor's concrete, grained timber panelling attempted to persuade the hungry that they were not under the arch of a prefabricated dome anchored in a waste of sand. Tables wore spotless linen, highlights gleamed from wine glasses. Bill sat down with Hugh and Alf, and their orders were taken by an unobtrusive fellow who clearly knew his stuff.
A palpable line segregated the Russians and Americans, except at one boisterous table where fists brandished calculators as often as booze. There was a boom of voices in dispute, friendly and passionately obscene, and a confusion of simultaneous translations.
'The engineers,' Lapp explained. 'A primitive species, bereft of the niceties of nationality.' Pondering the menu, he nominated soup, schnitzel, and a complex dessert that involved a mango and an architecture of gooey flourishes. Alf Dean shuddered, and settled for chicken salad. Bill agreed with him. 'Wine?'
'For lunch?' The Australian regarded him with horror. 'We'll have Carlton Draught,' he told the waiter with enormous conviction.
The beer's bitter chill harrowed Bill's root canals. Alf drained his own glass with a dexterous wrist, but stared gloomily at his salad. 'This place has murdered my appetite. A couple of months ago I'd have eaten a brace of astronauts under the table.'
'A girl I know did just that,' Hugh said, pushing his soup bowl aside. 'Right in the middle of the banquet she got down on her knees -- '
'You're an oral deviate, Lapp,' Bill told him. 'How in the name of all that's decent did you manage to raise a pass score on the psych profiles?'
'I may have gone down on that score,' Hugh said instantly, 'but I finally got my problem licked.'
Bill found himself choking, and tried the beer again. 'I've drunk worse,' he decided. 'What is it, kangaroo piss?'
'That was the original formula,' Alf said, with a slow smile. 'Unfortunately, a retired gentleman from Kentucky bought up the last of the animals for his burger chain.'
'I always wondered why they called it fast food. Alf, I take it you're not on the best of terms with another colonel from the home of the brave.'
'Chandler has an aversion to uppity colonials.'
'The Ugly American? I'm sorry, Alf. "There's one in every outfit".'
'They've specialised in them here,' Hugh said. 'Wait till you meet Sawyer.'
'The guy in charge downstairs?'
'Yeah. He's a Good Old Boy, with a bazooka and a Bible.'
The salad dressing was superb, and the fowl virginal. Alf was still fooling at the margins of his. 'I suppose you get used to being the policemen of the universe,' Bill said. 'And they'd hardly send any soft-liners to run a joint mission of this magnitude.'
'I can appreciate the dynamics of it,' Alf said, 'but Chandler's attitude gives me the shits. God damn it, my people have been here since Chandler's ancestors were poaching from the Neanderthals. I don't recall any of us swearing an oath of allegiance to the Stars and the Stripes.'
'They're always telling us Australia's a new country,' Hugh said. 'Me, I'm authentic first-generation American. If there hadn't been a brisk wind behind the boat they'd have had to register me as an Atlantean.' He gestured for his dessert.
It arrived snappily, and the astronaut monstered it while Bill forked up the last of his cucumber and yoghurt. 'Don't they have a weight limit for Shuttle crew?'
'Keep us on Tang for the final three weeks before liftoff.'
'You remind me powerfully of my son, Lapp. He eats like a pig and has a smart mouth. Do you have any kids of your own, Alf?'
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