"Greg Egan - Distress (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

 file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Egan/Egan,%20Greg%20-%20Distress.txt

in a pool of blood, you'd ask the same questions, wouldn't you? And tell the same reassuring lies?
"Who was it, Danny?" My brother. "Your brother had the knife?"
No he didn't. I can't remember what happened. Ask me later. My head's too fuzzy now.
7
"Why did you say it was your brother? Was it him, or wasn't it?" Of course it wasn't him. Don't
tell anyone I said that. I'll be all
right if you stop confusing me. Can I have the painkillers now?
Please?
His face flowed and froze, flowed and froze, like a sequence of masks, making his suffering seem
stylized, abstract. He began to move his head back and forth; weakly at first, then with manic
speed and energy. I assumed he was having some kind of seizure: the revival drugs were over-
stimulating some damaged neural pathway.
Then he reached up with his right hand and tore away the blindfold. His head stopped jerking
immediately; maybe his skin had grown hypersensitive, and the blindfold had become an unbearable
irritation. He blinked a few times, then squinted up at the room's bright lights. 1 could see his
pupils contract, his eyes moving purposefully. He raised his head slightly and examined Lukowski,
then looked down at his own body and its strange adornments: the pacemaker's brightly colored
ribbon cable; the heavy plastic blood-supply tubes; the knife wounds full of glistening white
maggots. Nobody moved, nobody spoke, while he inspected the needles and electrodes buried in his
chest, the strange pink tide washing out of him, his ruined lungs, his artificial airway. The
display screen was behind him, but everything else was there to be taken in at a glance. In a
matter of seconds, he knew, I could see the weight of understanding descend on him.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His expression shifted rapidly; through the pain there
was a sudden flash of pure astonishment, and then an almost amused comprehension of the full
strangeness-and maybe even the perverse virtuosity-of the feat to which he'd been subjected. For
an instant, he really did look like someone admiring a brilliant, vicious, bloody practical joke
at his own expense.
Then he said clearly, between enforced robotic gasps: "I ... don't. . . think . . . this ... is
... a ... good ... id ... dea. I... don't. . . want. . . to ... talk . . . any . . . more."
He closed his eyes and sank back onto the table. His vital signs were descending rapidly.
Lukowski turned to the pathologist. He was ashen, but he still gripped the boy's hand. "How could
the retinas function? What did you do? You stupid-" He raised his free hand as if to strike her,
but he didn't follow through. The bioethicist's T-shirt read: ETERNAL LOVE IS A LOVEPET. MADE
8
FROM YOUR LOVED ONE'S OWN DNA. The pathologist, standing her ground, screamed back at Lukowski,
"You had to push him, didn't you? You had to keep on and on about the brother, while his stress
hormone index climbed straight into the red!" I wondered who'd decided what a normal level of
adrenaline was, for the state of being dead from knife wounds but otherwise relaxed. Someone
behind me emitted a long string of incoherent obscenities. I turned to see the paramedic, who
would have been with Cavolini since the ambulance; I hadn't even realized that he was still in the
room. He was staring at the floor, his fists clenched tight, shaking with anger.
Lukowski grabbed my elbow, staining me with synthetic blood. He spoke in a stage whisper, as if
hoping to keep his words off the soundtrack. "You can film the next one. Okay? This has never
happened before-never-and if you show people a one-in-a-million glitch as if it
was-
The bioethicist ventured mildly, "I think the guidelines from the Tay-lor committee on optional
restraints make it clear-"
The pathologist's assistant turned on her, outraged. "Who asked you for an opinion? Procedure is