"Ken MacLeod - A Case of Consilience" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

In any case, it had been enough to bring the mycoids a place at the table of whatever Galactic Club had
set up the wormhole nexus. Perhaps they too had found a wormhole nexus on the edge of their solar
system. Perhaps they too had puzzled over the alien intelligences it connected them to. If so, they
showed little sign of having learned much. They pulsed their electrophoretically controlled molecular
gradients into the soil near the Station's portal, but much of itтАФeven assuming the translations were
correctтАФwas about strictly parochial matters. It was as if they weren't interested in communicating with
the humans.

Donald determined to make them interested. Besides his pastoral dutiesтАФsocial as well as spiritualтАФhe
had an allotted time for scholarship and study, and he devoted that time to the work of the mycoid
research team. He did not explain his purpose to the scientists. If the mycoids were sinners, he had an
obligation to offer them the chance of salvation. He had no obligation to offer the scientists the
temptation to scoff.

Time passed.

The airlock door slammed. Donald stepped through the portal and on to the surface. He walked forward
along an already-beaten track across the floor of the copse. Here and there, mushroom-like structures

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 MacLeod, Ken - A Case of Consilience

poked up through the spongy, bluish moss and black leaf-litter. The bulges of their inch-wide caps had a
watery transparency that irresistibly suggested that they were the lenses of eyes. No one had as yet dared
to pluck a fungus to find out.

A glistening patch of damp mud lay a couple of hundred meters from the station. It occupied a space
between the perimeters of two of the underground mycoids, and had become a preferred site for myco-
linguistic research. Rainbow ripples of chemical communication between the two sprawling circular
beings below stained its surface at regular intervals. Occasional rainstorms washed away the gradients,
but they always seeped out again.

Donald stepped up to the edge of the mud and set up the apparatus that the team had devised for a non-
intrusive examination of the mycoids' messages: a wide-angle combined digital field microscope and
spectroscope. About two meters long, its support frame straddled the patch, above which its camera
slowly tracked along. Treading carefully, he planted one trestle, then the other on the far side of the
patch, then walked back and laid the tracking rail across them both. He switched on the power pack and
the camera began its slow traverse.

There was a small experiment he had been given to perform. It had been done many times before, to no
effect. Perhaps this variant would be different. He reached in to his thigh pocket and pulled out a plastic-
covered gel disc, about five centimeters across, made from synthesized copies of local
mucopolysaccharides. The concentric circles of molecular concentrations that covered it spelled outтАФ
the team had hopedтАФthe message. We wish to communicate. Please respond.

Donald peeled off the bottom cover and, one knee on a rock and one hand on a fallen log, leaned out
over the multicolored mud and laid the gel disc down on a bare dark patch near the middle. He withdrew
his hand, peeling back the top cover as he did so, and settled back on his haunches. He stuffed the
crumpled wrappings in his pocket and reached in deeper for a second disc: one he'd covertly prepared