"Edward L. Ferman - Best From F&SF, 23rd Edition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferman Edward L)

know. They can build anything they need, make a blueprint in DNA, encapsulate it in a spore and bury it,
knowing exactly what will come up in forty thousand years. When it starts to get cold here and they
know the cycle's drawing to an end, they seed the planet with the spores and ... do something. Maybe
they die, or maybe they have some other way of passing the time. But they know they'll return.
"We can't say how long they've been prepared for a visit from us. Maybe only this cycle; maybe
twenty cycles ago. Anyway, at the last cycle they buried the kind of spores that would produce these
little gismos." She tapped the blue ball representing the Earth with one foot
They triggered them to be activated only when they encountered certain different conditions. Maybe
they knew exactly what it would be; maybe they only provided for a likely range of possibilities. Song
thinks they've visited us, back in the Stone Age. In some ways it's easier to believe than the alternative.
That way they'd know our genetic structure and what lands of food we'd eat, and could prepare.
"'Cause if they didn't visit us, they must have prepared other spores. Spores that would analyze new
proteins and be able to duplicate them. Further than that, some of the plants might have been able to
copy certain genetic material if they encountered any. Take a look at that pipe behind you." Singh turned
and saw a pipe about as thick as his arm. It was flexible, and had a swelling in it that continuously pulsed
in expansion and contraction.
Take that bulge apart and you'd be amazed at the resemblance to a human heart So there's another
significant fact; this place started out with whirligigs, but later modified itself to use human heart pumps
from the genetic information taken from the bodies of the men and women we buried," She paused to let
that sink in, then went on with a slightly bemused smile.
"The same thing for what we eat and drink. That liquor you drank, for instance. It's half alcohol, and
that's probably what it would have been without the corpses. But the rest of it is very similar to
hemoglobin. It's sort of like fermented blood. Human blood.тАЭ
Singh was glad he had refused the fourth drink. One of his crew members quietly put his glass down.
"I've never eaten human flesh," Lang went on, "but I think I know what it must taste like. Those vines
to your right; we strip off the outer part and eat the meat underneath. It tastes good. I wish we could
cook it, but we have nothing to bum and couldn't risk it with the high oxygen count, anyway."
Singh and everyone else was silent for a while. He found he realty was beginning to believe in the
Martians. The theory seemed to cover a lot of otherwise inexplicable facts.
Mary Lang sighed, slapped her thighs, and stood up. Like all the others, she was nude and seemed
totally at home with it None of them had worn anything but a Martian pressure suit for eight years. She
ran her hand lovingly over the gossamer wall, the wall that had provided her and her fellow colonists and
their children protection from the cold and the thin air for so long. He was struck by her easy familiarity
with what seemed to him outlandish surroundings. She looked at home. He couldn't imagine her
anywhere else.
He looked at the children. One wide-eyed little girl of eight years was kneeling at his feet. As his eyes
fell on her, she smiled tentatively and took his hand.
"Did you bring any bubblegum?" the girl asked.
He smiled at her. "No, honey, but maybe there's some hi the ship." She seemed satisfied. She would
wait to experience the wonders of Earthly science.
"We were provided for," Mary Lang said quietly. "They knew we were coming and they altered their
plans to fit us in." She looked back to Singh. "It would have happened even without the blowout and the
burials. The same sort of thing was happening around the Podkayne, too, triggered by our waste; urine
and feces and such. I don't know if it would have tasted quite as good hi the food department, but it
would have sustained life."
Singh stood up. He was moved, but did not trust himself to show ft adequately. So he sounded rather
abrupt, though polite.
"I suppose you'll be anxious to go to the ship," he said. "You're going to be a tremendous help. You
know so much of what we were sent here to find out. And you'll be quite famous when you get back to
Earth. Your back pay should add up to quite a sum."