"Greg Egan - Glory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

Four years passed, but the molecules were stable against the ravages of space. By the time theyтАЩd
traveled a billion kilometers they had almost come to a halt, and they would have fallen back to die in the
fires of the star that had forged them if their journey had not been timed so that the starтАЩs third planet, a
gas giant, was waiting to urge them forward. As they fell toward it, the giantтАЩs third moon moved across
their path. Eleven years after the nee-dleтАЩs launch, its molecular offspring rained down onto the methane
snow.

The tiny heat of their impact was not enough to damage them, but it melted a microscopic puddle in the
snow. Surrounded by food, the molecu-lar seeds began to grow. Within hours, the area was teeming
with nanomachines, some mining the snow and the minerals beneath it, others assembling the bounty into
an intricate structure, a rectangular panel a couple of meters wide.

From across the light-years, an elaborate sequence of gamma ray pulses fell upon the panel. These pulses
were the needleтАЩs true payload, the passen-gers for whom it had merely prepared the way, transmitted in
its wake four years after its launch. The panel decoded and stored the data, and the army of
nanomachines set to work again, this time following a far more elaborate blueprint. The miners were
forced to look farther afield to find all the ele-ments that were needed, while the assemblers labored to
reach their goal through a sequence of intermediate stages, carefully designed to protect the final product
from the vagaries of the local chemistry and climate.

After three monthsтАЩ work, two small fusion-powered spacecraft sat in the snow. Each one held a single
occupant, waking for the first time in their freshly minted bodies, yet endowed with memories of an earlier
life.

Joan switched on her communications console. Anne appeared on the screen, three short pairs of arms
folded across her thorax in a posture of calm repose. They had both worn virtual bodies with the same
anatomy before, but this was the first time they had become Noudah in the flesh.

тАЬWeтАЩre here. Everything worked,тАЭ Joan marveled. The language she spoke was not her own, but the
structure of her new brain and body made it second nature.

Anne said, тАЬNow comes the hard part.тАЭ

тАЬYes.тАЭ Joan looked out from the spacecraftтАЩs cockpit. In the distance, a fissured blue-gray plateau of
water ice rose above the snow. Nearby, the nanomachines were busy disassembling the gamma ray
receiver. When they had erased all traces of their handiwork they would wander off into the snow and
catalyze their own destruction.

Joan had visited dozens of planet-bound cultures in the past, taking on different bodies and languages as
necessary, but those cultures had all been plugged into the Amalgam, the metacivilization that spanned the
galactic disk. However far from home sheтАЩd been, the means to return to familiar places had always been
close at hand. The Noudah had only just mastered interplanetary flight, and they had no idea that the
Amalgam existed. The closest node in the AmalgamтАЩs network was seven light-years away, and even that
was out of bounds to her and Anne now: they had agreed not to risk disclosing its location to the
Noudah, so any transmission they sent could be directed only to a decoy node that theyтАЩd set up more
than twenty light-years away.

тАЬIt will be worth it,тАЭ Joan said.

AnneтАЩs Noudah face was immobile, but chromatophores sent a wave of violet and gold sweeping across