"Egan, Greg - Wang's Carpets" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

Vega's sole planet, Orpheus, had been a featureless blip to the best lunar
interferнometers; now Paolo gazed down on its blue-green crescent, ten
thousand kilometers below Carter-Zimmerman itself. Orpheus was terrestrial,
a nickel-iron-silicate world; slightly larger than Earth, slightly warmerЧa
billion kilometers took the edge off Vega's heatЧand almost drowning in
liquid water. Impatient to see the whole surface firsthand, Paolo slowed
his clock rate a thousandfold, allowing C-Z to circumnavigate the planet in
twenty subjective seconds, daylight unshrouding a broad new swath with each
pass. Two slender ocher-colored continents with mountainous spines
bracketed hemispheric oceans, and dazzling expanses of pack ice covered
both polesЧfar more so in the north, where jagged white peninsulas radiated
out from the midwinter arctic darkness.

The Orphean atmosphere was mostly nitrogenЧsix times as much as on Earth;
probably split by UV from primordial ammoniaЧwith traces of water vapor and
carbon dioxide, but not enough of either for a runaway greenhouse effect.
The high atmospheric pressure meant reduced evaporationЧPaolo saw not a
wisp of cloudЧ and the large, warm oceans in turn helped feed carbon
dioxide back into the crust, locking it up in limestone sediments destined
for subduction.

The whole system was young, by Earth standards, but Vega's greater mass,
and a denser protostellar cloud, would have meant swifter passage through
most of the traumas of birth: nuclear ignition and early luminosity
fluctuations; planetary coalescence and the age of bombardments. The
library estimated that Orpheus had enjoyed a relatively stable climate, and
freedom from major impacts, for at least the past hundred million years.

Long enough for primitive life to appearЧ

A hand seized Paolo firmly by the ankle and tugged him beneath the water.
He offered no resistance, and let the vision of the planet slip away. Only
two other people in C-Z had free access to this environmentЧand his father
didn't play games with his now-twelve-hundred-year-old son.

Elena dragged him all the way to the bottom of the pool, before releasing
his foot and hovering above him, a triumphant silhouette against the bright
surface. She was ancestor-shaped, but obviously cheating; she spoke with
perfect clarity, and no air bubbles at all.

"Late sleeper! I've been waiting seven weeks for this!"

Paolo feigned indifference, but he was fast running out of breath. He had
his exoself convert him into an amphibious human variantЧbiologically and
historiнcally authentic, if no longer the definitive ancestral phenotype.
Water flooded into his modified lungs, and his modified brain welcomed it.

He said, "Why would I want to waste consciousness, sitting around waiting
for the scout probes to refine their observations? I woke as soon as the
data was unambiguous."