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

reasons for happiness. And there was still the chance that one of them
would wake to the sound of four chimes.

Elena said, "If you'd slept much longer, you would have missed the vote."

The vote? The scouts in low orbit had gathered what data they could about
Orphean biology. To proceed any further, it would be necessary to send
microprobes into the ocean itselfЧan escalation of contact which required
the approval of two-thirds of the polis. There was no compelling reason to
believe that the presence of a few million tiny robots could do any harm;
all they'd leave behind in the water was a few kilojoules of waste heat.
Nevertheless, a faction had arisen which advoнcated caution. The citizens
of Carter-Zimmerman, they argued, could continue to observe from a distance
for another decade, or another millennium, refining their observations and
hypotheses before intruding . . . and those who disagreed could always
sleep away the time, or find other interests to pursue.

Paolo delved into his library-fresh knowledge of the "carpets"Чthe single
Orнphean lifeform detected so far. They were free-floating creatures living
in the equatorial ocean depthsЧapparently destroyed by UV if they drifted
too close to the surface. They grew to a size of hundreds of meters, then
fissioned into dozens of fragments, each of which continued to grow. It was
tempting to assume that they were colonies of single-celled organisms,
something like giant kelpЧbut there was no real evidence yet to back that
up. It was difficult enough for the scout probes to discern the carpets'
gross appearance and behavior through a kilometer of water, even with
Vega's copious neutrinos lighting the way; remote observations on a
microscopic scale, let alone biochemical analyses, were out of the
question. Spectroscopy revealed that the surface water was full of
intriguing molecular deнbrisЧbut guessing the relationship of any of it to
the living carpets was like trying to reconstruct human biochemistry by
studying human ashes.

Paolo turned to Elena. "What do you think?"

She moaned theatrically; the topic must have been argued to death while he
slept. "The microprobes are harmless. They could tell us exactly what the
carpets are made of, without removing a single molecule. What's the risk?
Culture shock?"

Paolo flicked water onto her face, affectionately; the impulse seemed to
come with the amphibian body. "You can't be sure that they're not
intelligent."

"Do you know what was living on Earth, two hundred million years after it
was formed?"

"Maybe cyanobacteria. Maybe nothing. This isn't Earth, though."

"True. But even in the unlikely event that the carpets are intelligent, do