"Alan Dean Foster - Humanx 5 - Sentenced To Prism" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

keep my com-ings and goings a secret from our competitors. So‑you'll
have to be
my eyes and ears on this trip, Evan." It was the first time he'd used his
visitor's first name. A ploy, Evan knew.
"Any particular suits I should pack, sir?"
"Standard private traveler's comfort suits. The com-pany will provide you with
some new ones, if you like. You may as well be comfortable during the
civilized
por-tion of this trip. It's a long way."
"How will my nonappearance at the genetics confer-ence be explained?"
"I see that you're taking this in the proper spirit. Don't worry. A suitable
explanation will be provided, in case anyone bothers to track your movements
that far. I don't think anyone will, but we'll play it safe just in case.
Don't
start worrying yourself with details. They'll be taken care of. Just get to
Prism, find out what's going on, compose a report that even I'll be able to
understand, and tell us what those people need so they can get back to work.
"I said that we'd like to have Prism to ourselves for a year or two. We'll be
very lucky to keep it secret for a year. We may not have half that, no matter
how careful we are. That means that every hour, every day, is one more hour
and
day to widen our advantage over our com-petitors."
"I can leave tomorrow, if necessary."
"Good." Machoka rose from the lounge. Evan sensed that the meeting was at an
end. He stood, and the two men shook hands.
"I'll be interested in a firsthand report when you get back," Machoka said as
they walked to the elevator. "Maybe you can make some of what I've been shown
comprehensible. I've run back the chips from Prism at slow freeze and I'm
damned
if I can understand half of what I'm seeing."
"I'll be looking forward to that meeting, sir."
Evan was provided that same information to peruse on his home reader, and he
could sympathize with Machoka's confusion. Despite his remarkable store of
personal knowledge he found himself having to halt the playback and refer
constantly to his reference texts.
The straight science was bad enough, all this business of a world inhabited by
photovores and organosilicates, but there was also the matter of the
creatures'
appearance. The lifeforms depicted in the preliminary report could not exist.
Surely they'd been invented by a coterie of drunken artists trying to pass off
their ravings as reality.
Part of the problem was that so many of the recorded images were indistinct.
The
report apologized for this, saying something about photographing fractal
geometries without the aid of Hausdorf lenses. Fractal geometries? Hausdorf
lenses? Back to the reference books.
His mind was spinning when he reported the following day to a branch of the
company he hadn't even known existed. It was housed in a small factory complex
on the outskirts of the city. From the outside the building looked quite
ordinary. Inside it was anything but.