"Kathleen Ann Goonan - Nanotech 04 - Light Music" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

moving purposefully through the pavilions, their faces tense. A few
tried to hail him, but didnтАЩt stop.
Inside the Hall, the cocoonтАЩs web stretched around him, its cool
gellish filaments enveloping receptors which were a part of his skin.
He relaxed into its soothing grasp. He loved and feared the
ConsilienceтАФloved it for its richness, and feared his own sense of
being out of control when he was within it.
He requested the hormones of learning. They would help him
assimilate and understand what he experienced. This would open
him completely to the Consilience, which could be frightening. But
he had to commune directly.
Swimming down into the deep programs of the city, he realized,
with a shock, that the city was indeed loosening its grasp on the
ocean floor.
Then, distantly, he felt explosions.
тАФJason Peabody: The lights on the ocean are ships attacking me .
The city was appealing to him directly, knowing that he had
helped design her.
He cursed his own loss of urgency. The city depended upon
defenses developed not by those who had faced combat at some
time, nor by those who had commanded forces. Instead, they were
developed by people who could not stomach the pain of others. They
were developed by people who respected others and who could not
imagine those who did not. Time and time again he had been
outvoted when proposing more violent and immediate methods of
counterattack, such as missiles.
Presently, the only defenses were insidious and subtle, like slow
poisons, nanotech defenses which would change the very
personality of the attackers should they take up residence. They
would not prevent injuries. And injuries could not be healed if the
city itself was seriously damaged.
тАФBegin to manufacture the defense plague, he directed.
тАФI already have .
тАФYou have awakened?
тАФI have been awake for a long time. The light accelerated the
process of growth .
But it did not use the word тАЬlight.тАЭ It used numbers and symbols
which flashed upon him briefly, almost as if the city believed it was
addressing an equal, when instead its mind was vast, alien,
unknowable.
He had to get out, and do what he could, directly. He struggled to
leave the Consilience.
Instead he was seized, like a small fish in the mouth of a large
one, and taken deep.
тАФPain at 187.43 degrees elevation 46 feet. And again 187.31.124
and 399 .
 Numbers unreeled through PeabodyтАЩs mind and being; the cityтАЩs
mind and being. He experienced a three-dimensional real time
impact when each explosive hit.
He plummeted wildly through the cityтАЩs to panic.