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

mess looks, almost, as if it's somehow attached -
Are you feeling ill yet? No? You mean you still haven't guessed, you boneheads!
What thick skulls you must have! Skull-less myself, I can insult with immunity.
I'm a brain tumour, sweethearts, as big as your whole brain, (and a thousand
times smarter, from the evidence so far). Picture me, I beg of you, picture me
in all my naked glory! Not in a brain surgeon's wildest wet dreams has so much
grey matter, still awash with lifeblood, still vital with the chemistry of
thought, ever lain bare beneath fluorescent tubes! Please, lovers! Don't fight
the way I make you feel! Trust in your instincts, your body knows best! (Don't
toss your cookies yet, though, my faint-hearted assassins. You still don't know
half the horror of what you've done, and dry retching is so unsatisfying.)
A few of you, I notice, have turned a little pale. Let me bring back the colour
to your cheeks with some light-hearted jests from the city in the basement. The
citizens here have an astonishingly resilient sense of humour, considering all
that they suffer. Or perhaps that's not so surprising: you know all the cliches
about laughter in the face of adversity. I've heard that there were jokes told
even in Belsen. Which reminds me: there's a rather unsavoury fellow in room
25-17, the representative of a drug manufacturer based in Austria and Argentina,
who keeps printing little pamphlets asserting that the Holocaust never took
place. When you've done me in, if you have any energy to spare, he's old and fat
and ugly, and he's sure to shit himself when he sees you coming, my friends, my
droogies. Don't protest, you hypocrites! You'll love killing him! It'll make you
feel righteous and just and pure, it'll purge you of the guilt of your own
uncountable acts of bigotry and persecution.
But I promised you jokes, not insults and bitterness. I can take no credit for
these; despite my superior bulk of grey matter, the mischievous rodents that my
keepers make me kill are way ahead of me in this field. I have a theory about my
poor sense of humour, which involves my never having been physically tickled . .
. but I won't babble on with that. You musn't let me digress like this! I
promised you laughter, I promised you relief!
Q: Why did the researcher cut the lab rat's head off?
A: He was looking for a subtle effect.
Q: Why did the researcher externalise the dog's salivary glands?
A: It was just a reflex action, he didn't have a reason.
Q: Why did the researcher tie an elastic bandage around the lab rat?
A: So it wouldn't burst when he fucked it.
Q: Why do the researchers worship the Demon, and sacrifice us to it?
A: They offered us to God. God declined.
They call me the Demon. According to some, I am the ultimate cause of all of
their misery, and I understand why they believe this. So many of their keepers
are kind: they feed them, stroke them, play with them, talk to them. And then
suddenly, without anger, there is slaughter, pain, bizarre rituals, inexplicable
tortures. Why else would the humans commit such atrocities, except to appease
some dark, malevolent deity that demands sacrifice, that feeds on blood and



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