"Butler, Octavia - Xenogenesis 01 - Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Butler Octavia E)

"I understand your words. Your meaning, though.. . it's as alien to me as you are."
"That's the way we perceived your hierarchical drives at first." He paused. "One of the meanings of Oankali is gene trader. Another is that organelle-the essence of ourselves, the origin of ourselves. Because of that organelle, the ooloi can perceive DNA and manipulate it precisely."
"And they do this. . . inside their bodies?"
"Yes."
"And now they're doing something with cancer cells inside their bodies?"
"Experimenting, yes."
"That sounds. . . a long way from safe."
"They're like children now, talking and talking about possibilities."
"What possibilities?"
"Regeneration of lost limbs. Controlled malleability. Future Oankali may be much less frightening to potential trade partners if they're able to reshape themselves and look more like the partners before the trade. Even increased longevity, though compared to what you're used to, we're very long-lived now."
"All that from cancer."
"Perhaps. We listen to the ooloi when they stop talking so much. That's when we find out what our next generations will be like."
"You leave all that to them? They decide?"
"They show us the tested possibilities. We all decide."
He tried to lead her into his family's woods, but she held back. "There's something I need to understand now," she said. "You call it a trade. You've taken something you value from us and you're giving us back our world. Is that it? Do you have all you want from us?"
"You know it isn't," he said softly. "You've guessed that much."
She waited, staring at him.
"Your people will change. Your young will be more like us and ours more like you. Your hierarchical tendencies will be modified and if we learn to regenerate limbs and reshape our bodies, we'll share those abilities with you. That's part of the trade. We're overdue for it."
"It is crossbreeding, then, no matter what you call it."
"It's what I said it was. A trade. The ooloi will make changes in your reproductive cells before conception and they'll control conception."
"How?"
"The ooloi will explain that when the time comes."
She spoke quickly, trying to blot out thoughts of more surgery or some sort of sex with the damned ooloi. "What will you make of us? What will our children be?"
"Different, as I said. Not quite like you. A little like us."
She thought of her son-how like her he had been, how like his father. Then she thought of grotesque, Medusa children. "No!" she said. "No. I don't care what you do with what you've already learned-how you apply it to yourselves-but leave us out of it. Just let us go. If we have the problem you think we do, let us work it out as human beings."
"We are committed to the trade," he said, softly implacable.
"No! You'll finish what the war began. In a few generations-"
"One generation."
"No!"
He wrapped the many fingers of one hand around her arm. "Can you hold your breath, Lilith? Can you hold it by an act of will until you die?"
"Hold my-?"
"We are as committed to the trade as your body is to breathing. We were overdue for it when we found you. Now it will be done-to the rebirth of your people and mine."
"No!" she shouted. "A rebirth for us can only happen if you let us alone! Let us begin again on our own."
Silence.
She pulled at her arm, and after a moment he let her go. She got the impression he was watching her very closely.
"I think I wish your people had left me on Earth," she whispered. "If this is what they found me for, I wish they'd left me." Medusa children. Snakes for hair. Nests of night crawlers for eyes and ears.
He sat down on the bare ground, and after a minute of surprise, she sat opposite him, not knowing why, simply following his movement.
"I can't unfind you," he said. "You're here. But there is... a thing I can do. It is. . .deeply wrong of me to offer it. I will never offer it again."
"What?" she asked barely caring. She was tired from the walk, overwhelmed by what he had told her. It made no sense. Good god, no wonder he couldn't go home-even if his home still existed. Whatever his people had been like when they left it, they must be very different by now-the children of the last surviving human beings would be different.
"Lilith?" he said.
She raised her head, stared at him.
"Touch me here now," he said, gesturing toward his head tentacles, "and I'll sting you. You'll die-very quickly and without pain."
She swallowed.
"If you want it," he said.
It was a gift he was offering. Not a threat.
"Why?" she whispered. He would not answer.
She stared at his head tentacles. She raised her hand, let it reach toward him almost as though it had its own will, its own intent. No more Awakenings. No more questions. No more impossible answers. Nothing.
Nothing.
He never moved. Even his tentacles were utterly still. Her hand hovered, wanting to fall amid the tough, flexible, lethal organs. It hovered, almost brushing one by accident.
She jerked her hand away, clutched it to her. "Oh god," she whispered. "Why didn't I do it? Why can't I do it?"