"Alex Irvine - Volunteers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Irvine Alexander C)

├Дt
This is what I'm worried about. How much do you care about me?
├Дt
"While prospecting in the asteroid belt six years ago, in April 2058," Rudi began, "freelance rock miners
discovered three artifacts apparently of nonterrestrial origin. Schimmel acquired these artifacts without
publicity and set about trying to discover their history. This effort proved largely futile because the
artifacts refused to tell us.

"Gradually we were able to determine that these three artifacts were in fact sentient and that their long
period of isolation had deranged them to a considerable degree. Communication was laborious at best,
and frequently impossible; but with dedicated effort, and at no small human cost, we were able to
determine that these three beings were in fact merely facets, aspects, of entities that existed only partially
in our familiar four-dimensional spacetime. They were captured, harnessed in mechanical devices that,
they said, enabled four-dimensional objects to travel at supraluminal speeds. It goes without saying that
this ability, if true, is the most significant scientific discovery in the history of mankind, and it comes at a
time when it is most sorely needed.

"Before Big Mickey, we at Schimmel were in the process of interrogating these beings to understand
what short-term benefit we might derive from their knowledge. In light of the current threat to human
civilization, however, we have turned our research in a new direction, and it is now apparent that we can
construct spacecraft incorporating these beings. It is for this reason that we have leased the facilities at
Lagrange Five: Schimmel GmbH is donating three vessels, each with a capacity of two thousand persons,
to the dream of human survival.

"The technological obstacles, though formidable, have been largely overcome. What remains is a
challenge of literally another dimension. Birgid?"

The psychiatrist picked up her cue. "A consequence of the Navigators' long isolationтАФhow long we do
not knowтАФis that they are deeply withdrawn into themselves. This has made them unable to maintain
their consciousness of four-dimensional spacetime unless a being native to that spacetime is in more or
less constant intimate contact with them. In some fundamental way, they have forgotten how to be in our
spacetime and will need a physical presence to remind them. If the mission of these three ships is to
succeed, each Navigator will require a single human as an anchor to the ship and its occupants. Without
such an anchor, we are informed, it is a near certainty that the Navigators' attentions will drift. In that
situation, ships will suffer a catastrophicтАФdeceleration is the best word we haveтАФfrom what we have
chosen to call hyperspace into real space, the energy imbalance of which would annihilate the vessel.

"We are asking you, Mr. Brennan, to perform this essential task of anchoring the Navigators and perhaps
even more importantly providing them the kind of sentient interaction they so desperately crave. These
are terribly lonely and needy beings, irrational and in fundamental ways impossible to understand, and
sustained contact with Navigators has during the past seven years killed or deranged nearly everyone
who has undertaken it. They're trying to make it easierтАФthey've even gendered themselves to render a
simulacrum personality that we can understandтАФbut this is enormously dangerous."

"I can't do this. I have a wife," my dad said. "We just had a baby."

"We realize this," Dr. Prinz answered. "We would not have chosen you. Ideally we would be able to
screen a large sample for people who are both compatible with an individual Navigator and endowed
with the kind of physical and psychological strength to survive what might be a journey of decades or
even centuries. The problem is that one of the Navigators has chosen you."