"Damon Knight - Four In One" - читать интересную книгу автора (Knight Damon)

Again George felt a movement toward the thicket, again he resisted it. Then he found himself overpowered, as another set of muscles joined themselves to Gumbs's. Quivering, crabwise, the something _meisterii_ moved half a meter. Then it stopped, straining.
And for the second time that day, George was forced to revise his opinion of Vivian Bellis.
"I believe you, Mr. Meister--George," she said. "I don't want to go back-. Tell me what you want me to do."
"You're doing beautifully now," George said after a speechless instant. "Except if you can grow an arm, I imagine that will be useful."
The struggle went on.
"Now we know where we are," said McCarty to Gumbs.
"Yes. Quite right."
"Major Gumbs," she said crisply, "you are opposite me, I believe?"
"Am I?" said Gumbs doubtfully.
"Never mind. I believe you are. Now: is Meister to your left or right?"
"Left. I know that, anyhow. Can see his eye stalks out 0f the corner of my eye."
"Very well." McCarty's arm rose, with a sharp-pointed fragment of rock clutched in the blobby fingers.
Horrified, George watched it bend backward across the curve of the monster's body. The long, knife-sharp point probed tentatively at the surface three centimeters short of the area over his brain. Then the fist made an abrupt up-and-down movement and a fierce stab of pain shot through him.
"Not quite long enough, I think," McCarty said. She flexed the arm, then brought it back to almost the same Spot and stabbed again.
"No," she said thoughtfully. "It will take a little longer," then, "Major Gumbs, after my next attempt you will tell me if you notice any reaction in Meister's eye stalks." The pain was still throbbing along George's nerves. With one half-blinded eye he watched the embryonic arm that was growing, too slowly, under the rim; with the other, fascinated, he watched McCarty's arm lengthen slowly toward him.
It was growing visibly, he suddenly realized--but it wasn't getting any nearer. In fact, incredibly enough, it seemed to be losing ground.
The monster's flesh was flowing away under it, expanding in both directions.
McCarty stabbed again, with vicious strength. This time the pain was less acute.
"Major?" she said, "any result?"
"No," said Gumbs, "no, I think not. We seem to be moving forward a bit, though, Miss McCarty."
"A ridiculous error," she replied. "We are being forced _back._ Pay attention, Major.
"No, really," he protested. "That is to say, we're moving toward the thicket. Forward to me, backward to you."
"Major Gumbs, I am moving forward, you are moving back."
They were both right, George discovered: the monster's body was no longer circular, it was extending itself along the Gumbs-McCarty axis. A suggestion of concavity was becoming visible in the center. Below the surface, too, there was motion.
The four brains now formed an oblong, not a square.
The positions of the spinal cords had shifted. His own and Vivian's seemed to be about where they were, but Gumbs's now passed under McCarty's brain, and vice versa.
Having increased its mass by some two hundred kilos, the something _meisterii_ was fissioning into two individuals--and tidily separating its tenants, two to each. Gumbs and Meister in one, McCarty and Bellis in the other.
The next time it happened, he realized, each product of the fission would be reduced to one brain--and the time after that, one of the new individuals out of each pair would be a monster in the primary or untenanted state, quiescent, camouflaged, waiting to be stumbled over.
But that meant that, like the common amoeba, this fascinating organism was immortal. It never died, barring accidents; it simply grew and divided.
Not the tenants, though, unfortunately-their tissues would wear out and die.
Or would they? Human nervous tissue didn't proliferate as George's and Miss McCarty's had done; neither did _any_ human tissue build new cells fast enough to account for George's eye stalks or Miss McCarty's arm.
There was no question about it: none of that new tissue could possibly be human; it was all counterfeit, produced by the monster from its own substance according to the structural blueprints in the nearest genuine cells. And it was a perfect counterfeit: the new tissues knit with the old, neurones coupled with dendrites, muscles contracted or expanded on command. The imitation _worked._
And therefore, when nerve cells wore out, they could be replaced. Eventually the last human cell would go, the human tenant would have become totally monster--but "a difference that makes no difference is no difference." Effectively, the tenant would still be human--and he would be immortal.
Barring accidents. Or murder.
Miss McCarty was saying, "Major Gumbs, you are being ridiculous The explanation is quite obvious. Unless you are deliberately deceiving me, for what reason I cannot imagine, then our efforts to move in opposing directions must be pulling this creature apart."
McCarty was evidently confused in her geometry. Let her stay that way--it would keep her off balance until the fission was complete. No, that was no good. George himself was out of her reach already, and getting farther~ away--but how about Bellis? Her brain and McCarty's were, if anything, closer together....
What to do? If he warned the girl, that would only draw McCarty's attention to her sooner. Unless he could misdirect her at the same time--
There wasn't much time left, he realized abruptly. If he was right in thinking that some physical linkage between the brains had occurred to make communication possible, those cells couldn't hold out much longer; the gap between the two pairs of brains was widening steadily.

"Vivian!" he said.
"Yes, George?"
Relieved, he said rapidly, "listen, we're not pulling this body apart, it's splitting. That's the way it reproduces. You and I will be in one half, Gumbs and McCarty in the other. If they don't give us any trouble, we can all go where we please--"
"Oh, I'm so glad!"
What a warm voice she had... "Yes," said George nervously, "but we may have to fight them; it's up to them. So grow an arm, Vivian."
"I'll try," she said doubtfully. "I don't know--"
McCarty's voice cut across hers. "Ah. Major Gumbs, Since you have eyes, it will be your task to see to it that those two do not escape. Meanwhile, I suggest that you, also, grow an arm."
"Doing my best," said Gumbs.
Puzzled, George glanced downward, past his own half formed arm: there, almost out of sight, was a fleshy bulge under Gumbs's section of the rim! The major had been working on it in secret, keeping it hidden ... and it was already better developed than George's.
"Oh-oh," said Gumbs abruptly. "Look here, Miss McCarty, Meister's been leading you up the garden path. Look here, I mean, you and I aren't going to be in the same half. How could we be? We're on _opposite sides_ of the blasted thing. It's going to be you and Miss Bellis, me and Meister."
The monster was developing a definite waistline. The spinal cords had rotated, now, so that there was clear space between them in the center.