"George R. R. Martin - The Glass Flower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

cyborg he was in the legends that had grown up around his name, but as he stood before me, he seemed
more a robot, insufficiently organic to pass even as android.

He was naked, if a thing of metal and plastic can be naked. His chest was jet; some shining black alloy or
smooth plastic, I could not tell. His arms and legs were transparent plasteel. Beneath that false skin, I
could see the dark metal of his duralloy bones, the power-bars and flexors that were muscles and
tendons, the micromotors and sensing computers, the intricate pattern of lights racing up and down his
superconductive neurosystem. His fingers were steel. On his right hand, long silver claws sprang rakishly
from his knuckles when he made a fist.

He was looking at me. His eyes were crystalline lenses set in metal sockets, moving back and forth in
some green translucent gel. They had no visible pupils; behind each implacable crimson iris burned a dim
light that gave his stare an ominous red glow. ├втВм┼УAm I that fascinating?├втВмтАв he asked me. His voice was
surprisingly natural; deep and resonant, with no metallic echoes to corrode the humanity of his inflections.

"Kleronomas,├втВмтАв I said. ├втВм┼УYour name is fascinating, certainly. A very long time ago, there was
another man of that name, a cyborg, a legend. You know that, of course. He of the Kleronomas Survey.
The founder of the Academy of Human Knowledge on Avalon. Your ancestor? Perhaps metal runs in
your family."

"No,├втВмтАв said the cyborg. ├втВм┼УMyself. I am Joachim Kleronomas."

I smiled for him. ├втВм┼УAnd I'm Jesus Christ. Would you care to meet my Apostles?"

"You doubt me, Wisdom?"

"Kleronomas died on Avalon a thousand years ago."

"No,├втВмтАв he said. ├втВм┼УHe stands before you now."

"Cyborg,├втВмтАв I said, ├втВм┼Уthis is Croan'dhenni. You would not have come here unless you sought rebirth,
unless you sought to win new life in the game of mind. So be warned. In the game of mind, your lies will
be stripped away from you. Your flesh and your metal and your illusions, we will take them all, and in the
end there will be only you, more naked and alone than you can ever imagine. So do not waste my time. It
is the most precious thing I have, time. It is the most precious thing any of us have. Who are you,
cyborg?"

"Kleronomas,├втВмтАв he said. Was there a mocking note in his voice? I could not tell. His face was not built
for smiling. ├втВм┼УDo you have a name?├втВмтАв he asked me.

"Several,├втВмтАв I said.

"Which do you use?"

"My players call me Wisdom."

"That is a title, not a name,├втВмтАв he said.
I smiled. ├втВм┼УYou are traveled, then. Like the real Kleronomas. Good. My birth name was Cyrain. I
suppose, of all my names, I am most used to that one. I wore it for the first fifty years of my life, until I
came to Dam Tullian and studied to be a Wisdom and took a new name with the title."