"Greg Egan - The Extra (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

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The Extra

Greg Egan


Daniel Gray didn't merely arrange for his Extras to live in a building within
the grounds of his main residence - although that in itself would have been
shocking enough. At the height of his midsummer garden party, he had their
trainer march them along a winding path which took them within metres of
virtually every one of his wealthy and powerful guests.
There were five batches, each batch a decade younger than the preceding one,
each comprising twenty-five Extras (less one or two here and there; naturally,
some depletion had occurred, and Gray made no effort to hide the fact). Batch A
were forty-four years old, the same age as Gray himself. Batch E, the
four-year-olds, could not have kept up with the others on foot, so they followed
behind, riding an electric float.
The Extras were as clean as they'd ever been in their lives, and their hair -
and beards in the case of the older ones - had been laboriously trimmed, in
styles that amusingly parodied the latest fashions. Gray had almost gone so far
as to have them clothed - but after much experimentation he'd decided against
it; even the slightest scrap of clothing made them look too human, and he was
acutely aware of the boundary between impressing his guests with his daring, and
causing them real discomfort. Of course, naked, the Extras looked exactly like
naked humans, but in Gray's cultural milieu, stark naked humans en masse were
not a common sight, and so the paradoxical effect of revealing the creatures'
totally human appearance was to make it easier to think of them as less than
human.
The parade was a great success. Everyone applauded demurely as it passed by -
in the context, an extravagant gesture of approval. They weren't applauding the
Extras themselves, however impressive they were to behold; they were applauding
Daniel Gray for his audacity in breaking the taboo.
Gray could only guess how many people in the world had Extras; perhaps the
wealthiest ten thousand, perhaps the wealthiest hundred thousand. Most owners
chose to be discreet. Keeping a stock of congenitally brain-damaged clones of
oneself - in the short term, as organ donors; in the long term (once the
techniques were perfected), as the recipients of brain transplants - was not
illegal, but nor was it widely accepted. Any owner who went public could expect
a barrage of anonymous hate mail, intense media scrutiny, property damage,
threats of violence - all the usual behaviour associated with the public debate
of a subtle point of ethics. There had been legal challenges, of course, but
time and again the highest courts had ruled that Extras were not human beings.
Too much cortex was missing; if Extras deserved human rights, so did half the
mammalian species on the planet. With a patient, skilled trainer, Extras could
learn to run in circles, and to perform the simple, repetitive exercises that
kept their muscles in good tone, but that was about the limit. A dog or a cat
would have needed brain tissue removed to persuade it to live such a boring
life.
Even those few owners who braved the wrath of the fanatics, and bragged about