"Peter F. Hamilton - Adam's Gene" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

ADAM'S GENE
Peter F. Hamilton
A short story published in Interzone Magazine 75, September 1993.


v1.0 by the N.E.R.D's. Scanned, page numbers removed, paragraphs joined, formatted, common OCR
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v1.1 Full read through completed by the N.E.R.D's

When he was in his youthful prime, the thirtysomething years beloved by advertising companies, David
Milton devoted his life to pushing the revolution, a quaint 1960s ideal of the pastoral alternative. The
bands his management company signed up reflected his politics; no pop pap for him, he promoted
musicians with causes. It was a shrewd move, for radical youth culture remained a popular cliche at the
turn of the century; they sold a lot of albums. He made a great deal of money.

And then it actually happened: a different kind of world blossomed. Adam's vigorous biotechnology
usurped the established order just as all the hippy lyrics had prayed for.

David Milton dropped out of the public eye. Not bitter, but resentful and afraid, alienated from the power
of the new Green wonders. Poetic justice in a way; so it was only ever going to be a question of time
before his past caught up with him.

It took 22 years.

*****

Eve arrived in Francet on a warm sunny June morning, walking into town under a cornflower blue sky
ribbed with faint opalescent cloudbands. They called her Eve now, though to David she would always be
Charlotte. Charlotte with the shy smile and uncrushable spirit.

She walked down the middle of the road, out of the heat shimmer's silver and black ripples, a comet's tail
of multicoloured butterflies swirling erratically in her wake. Seventeen years old, clad in a simple
snow-white sleeveless dress, strands of fair hair waving in the balmy air. The epitome of classic beauty, a
girl da Vinci would have paid a king's ransom to paint.

The children saw her first and squealed with excitement. They raced across the shaggy overgrown verges
towards her, frightening the butterflies away. There were nine of them; all girls, of course. Even David's
only child was a daughter: Kirsten, 18 years old, and just as zippy as her mother had been when they
married. He had neither the courage nor stubbornness to fight the battle against gender.

The efficiency with which Adam and his kind were spreading their biotechnology empire across the globe
was quite irresistible. The old mechanized economy was smothering and dying below their genetically
adapted creatures and plants. There was no requirement for ordinary boys in such a world, only Adam's
sons.

David heard the girls' twittering laughter through his open study window, and voicelined the computer's
finance display to hold. His Audio Visual distribution company was just keeping afloat, not that
economics as he understood it played much part in modern life. Not with people able to grow almost
anything they wanted, from landcoral houses to an entire genealogy of servitor animals, none of which