"Greg Egan - The Demon' s Passage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

is the realm of pure abstraction: no test tubes here, no culture flasks or Petri
dishes, and no visible hint of the likes of me.
Thirty-one to forty is administration and marketing, and on top of that is a
simulated Viennese cafe which revolves once every ten minutes. There's a
coin-operated telescope on the rim, with which people can, and frequently do,
watch the prostitutes in leopard-skin leotards pacing the streets of nearby
Kings Cross.
I've been teasing you, haven't I, leading you astray. Upwards, ever upwards,
away from the traffic noise, away from the putrid garbage, the broken glass, the
used needles, the choking stench of urine. The building that I have described so
far rises up into the almost-fresh air, up into the sunlight, up into the blue
sky of daydreams. But don't you think there's something more? Don't you think
this building has foundations?
Underneath the shoppers are five levels of research labs. People here walk
briskly, radiating a message with every step: I'm busy, I'm highly trained, and
I have something critical incubating/concentrating/ spinning/in a column/on a
gel that I must go and check in exactly three minutes and thirty-five seconds.
Twenty-five seconds, now.
It's all happening here, no doubt about it: flow cytometry, mass spectrometry,
X-ray crystallography, high performance liquid chromatography. Nuclear magnetic
resonance. Genes are mapped, spliced, cloned, proteins are synthesised and
purified. A real hive of activity. But what's supporting it, what's holding it
up? We haven't far to go now. Be patient.
There's a level of cold-rooms and freezers.
There's a level of equipment stores, and another for chemicals.
Second-lowest is where they keep the computers. Four of them, big as elephants.
Seen from the outside they have a certain dignity, but within they're just
puppets with split personalities, twitching pathetically in a thousand different
directions as the masters upstairs tug at them impatiently, scream at them to


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dance out the answers, and then curse them for liars when the truth is too ugly,
or too beautiful, to bear.
And underneath them all is the animal house. That's your station, your stop,
sweethearts. That's where you'll find me waiting, a-quivering just for you.
Walk straight out of the elevator; there's an easily spotted foot-switch on the
right that disables the alarm (installed after Animal Liberation's last raid),
then it's left, right, left, left, right (this love you have for mazes I'll
never understand). You'll see some big orange cages almost dead ahead. Ignore
the sounds of startled rabbits around you, wishing they could flee; the one in
cage D-246 won't escape if you leave his door open a year.
The heavy plastic part of the cage is opaque, with only the top half made of
see-through wire, and since my host is always lying down, you might have to
stand on tippy-toes to see just what's inside. Even then, the sight is so
unusual that interpretation may take you some time. An entire lettuce,
discoloured and putrid with age? Absurd! What animal would lie there with
decaying food sitting on its head? What keeper would permit it? And the vile