"James P. Hogan - Bug Park" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

Bug Park

by James P. Hogan
 PROLOGUE
Low, black, and menacing, its angular metallic surfaces bristling with sensors and protuberances, the robot resembled, if
anything, a walking warship.
It moved on six multiply-articulated legs projecting outward and downward from its underside in pairs, like sprung
arches. Its front consisted of a blunt, turret-like head, flanked by a pair of rotary-jointed grasping appendages terminating
in four-point, independently movable claws.
Emerging soundlessly from a steep-sided valley of depths lost in blackness, it climbed a hill of regularly spaced ridges
alternating with darker furrows. A fibrous growth, like coarse, springy grass, covered the surface, which yielded slightly
under the robotтАЩs weight. It reached the top of the rise and paused to survey a landscape of peculiarly rounded mounds and
folds, picked out bloodred in the gloom by the glow of a distant light. The red тАЬmoonтАЭ illuminating the nocturnal landscape
formed the numerals 3:17:04.
The device was no bigger than a cockroach. It stood atop the highest of a chain of wrinkles formed where the bedspread
was pulled around the figure lying asleep. After checking its direction, the mechanical insect resumed moving, following an
ascending fold onto the slowly breathing form, higher to the shoulder, and from there onto the smoother expanse of sheet.
At the edge of the sheet, inches from the sleeping manтАЩs ear, the device halted again to identify its target, gauging angles
and distances.
Then it moved fast for the area beneath the ear lobe, where even in an autopsy a small puncture would easily be
overlooked. The claws had anchored to the epidermis and the tiny needle discharged before the alarm message registered
in the sluggishly responding brain.
The figure stirred, turning its head. тАЬUh . . . Huh? . . .тАЭ An arm freed itself and slapped. тАЬWassat?тАЭ But the tiny assailant
had already disengaged and jumped two feet back down the bed.
The man lay puzzled in the darkness, rubbing his neck as his faculties returned. For a moment he was restored fully to
wakefulness; and then a heavy, muggy feeling came over him. He sat up, fumbled for the light-switch in the red glow cast
by the hotel roomтАЩs clock, but couldnтАЩt coordinate sufficiently to find it. He swung his legs out and grabbed for the phone,
but crashed instead into the bedside unit, upsetting the tray with the coffee pot and chinaware from his room-service meal.
He put a hand to his head. тАЬOh Christ . . .тАЭ
His legs buckled, and he slumped down onto the edge of the bed again. For a few seconds he tried futilely to resist
whatever was happening to him; then he slid down and crumpled to a sitting position on the floor. His body went limp and
keeled over.
At the foot of the bed, the tiny robot dropped to the floor. It crossed to the protruding corner formed by the bathroom,
from there to the small vestibule area, and exited to the corridor via the gap beneath the door.
The eyes staring sightlessly upward slowly glazed over in the dim red glow from the clock, obliviously counting away the
seconds.
 CHAPTER ONE

Kevin Heber had never really believed in love at first sight. It was something that he had always taken on faith about the
world of adulthood, like the work ethic, the appeal of unsweetened black coffee, or the notion that WagnerтАЩs music might
really be better than it sounds. Not that he had devoted a great amount of contemplation to the subject. Being an active
and healthily curious fifteen-year-old with rapidly expanding horizons on how much there was to do in life, he was more
preoccupied with trying to fit a constellation of interests that was constantly growing, into a residue of twenty-four hours
which, after deductions for even minimal eating, sleeping, and necessary chores, seemed to be all-the-time shrinking.
Well, it probably wasnтАЩt really love, he told himselfтАФnot if the things that adults liked to tell smugly about lifeтАЩs
complications always getting worse, never better, were to be believed; or the words of the songs that they got sentimental
over, that dated from somewhere in that vague span of time between the appearance of personal computers and the last ice
age. But any reaction that could make him turn his head away from the screen not once but a second time, and fixedly, just
when he and Taki had found the error that had been hanging up the tactile-array interrupt routine, had to be somewhere
on the same emotional continent.