"Sean McMullen - Alone in His Chariot" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

Second Jeremy Reston Illustration
He was paralysed. He could not move, speak, or even blink.
"Had to power you down," said the shadow. "Too much struggling for the automedic to finish working.
Vudraken the God, what a laugh! Vuner, when the ancient Romans had a military victory they put a slave
beside the general as his chariot was driven through the streets in triumph. Every so often the slave had to
remind the general that they were both only mortal. I'm sure no slaves did that in your dreamout world,
and that you were alone in your triumphal chariot . . . but you're still mortal."
The sun faded, the sky and landscape glowed with a grey that became concrete walls and ceiling. One
wall had a barred door.
Behind it stood a blonde woman in a green smock. Vuner realised that his perspective was from only
knee height. He swivelled his lenses to look at himself: his body was squat and cubic, resting on tractor
treads. His arms were like robot manipulators. With a tinny scream he backed away from the door, his
motor whining with the overload. Pain raked his back as he hit the wall.
"The unit I housed you in is covered with a type of inorganic skin, used mainly to give industrial robots a
sense of touch," the woman explained. "I wired the sensor filaments right down into your brain.
Hardwired them. TEFG-7 cannot dissolve the link and let you dreamout. It took me five years."
"Why did you do this?" wailed Vuner through the voicebox. To his surprise tears welled from tubes on
the rims of his lenses.
"Why? Who, Vuner, who! I'm thirty seven years old: orphaned at seven, but by hell I became such a
good neurophysiologist that I'm even on first name terms with the great Professor Cottak. Mind you, she
doesn't know that I was christened Jane Dodsworth -"
His terrified cry overloaded the automatic level control of the voicebox, and he rolled frantically in
circles.
"Society is not vindictive any more, Vuner, but I am! I found my parents lying in their own blood and, and
. . . putting your brain in a bottle but leaving your mind free to play God is not my idea of justice! I'm very
rich, Vuner: I had this cell built under my estate especially for you, I falsified the records declaring you
dead, I'll keep you here for the rest of your life, and I swear I'll outlive you through sheer spite!"
She turned and walked away from the cell. Vuner heard a large, heavy door boom shut and lugs thump
into place, then there was silence. He gripped the bars, and they were cold and hard beneath the pads of
his manipulators.




Originally appeared pp69-84, Eidolon Issue 04, March 1991.
Copyright ┬й Sean McMullen, 1991. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with kind permission of the author.