"Daniel Marcus - Ex Vitro" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marcus Daniel)

helmeted, visored, ensconced in a padded chair in a darkened featureless
room.

And in the lab, cocooned in biostasis, the embryo, a radiant point of
light in her mind's eye. She could imagine the impossibly slow heartbeat,
just enough to keep it suspended above the threshold of death. In quiet
moments, she imagined that pulse to be her own, could feel her awareness
contract to that tiny lump of blood and meat, miracle of coded proteins.
One part Jax, one part Maddy. Something other than the sum of its
constituents.

It was usually bearable, her awareness of it a dull, constant pressure in
the back of her mind. But sometimes she felt an ache in the deepest part
of her, as if it had been torn from her leaving a bleeding, septic cavity.
How could it live apart from her? Or she from it? She would tell Jax soon.



III

He turned off the suit speaker. The sibilant whisper of his breath and
the deep ocean surge of blood music in his ears rushed in to fill the silence.
Titan's daylight sky arched over his head like a great inverted bowl, deep
cyan overhead fading to a bruised purple around the horizon. The
photochemical smog was thinned to a gauzy softness, a blurring of focus,
and Sol hung overhead like a bright, fuzzy diamond. He could almost feel
the weight of Saturn's presence suspended unseen in the sky, shielded by
Titan's bulk.
 He had walked about a klick along the shore. The station was no longer
visible behind him and he felt exhilarated with the solitude. A herd of
about twenty slugs had been pacing him as he walked, oozing along almost
like a single organism. He hadn't been sure at first whether they started
trailing him or he them, but he was certain they were aware of him now.
When he stopped, they did. He walked another few steps along the rocky
shore, and the herd moved along with him like an amoeba, extending a
long, thin pseudopod which was then reabsorbed into the main body. This
was the first time they had exhibited anything like a response to an
external stimulus. Like awareness.

What are you? They stretched out before him, attenuating into a long,
sinuously curving line, like an old river.

He closed his eyes and concentrated as hard as he could. Tell me what
you are.

In his mind's eye he saw the pattern, a meandering line of bright
sparks, ripple slightly. He opened his eyes.

Tell me.