"Paul Mcauley - Red Dust" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

there, there it goes!"

Lee saw it at once, an ice mouse jinking into the shadow
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PAUL J. MCAULEY

of an undercut boulder, tufted tail held up like an aerial.
Spring, and the animals which had hibernated through the
long winter or which like the ice mouse had lain neither
dead nor alive, blood vessels and body cavity filled with ice
crystals minutely shaped by antifreeze peptides, were now
all alive alive-o. Running and feeding and breeding all unawares
of the humans who had brought them here. Mice
and men: men and the Ten Thousand Years.
The Ten Thousand Years and the conchies.
Perhaps the conchie propaganda was right, perhaps the
Golden Path was the only way, the inevitable next step in
the evolution of intelligence. Many, like Xiao Bing, were eager
to embrace it, pledging early deaths in exchange for the
privilege of designing their own private niche in the Golden
Isles of Heaven that lay beyond the barrier in information
space. But Lee did not understand the conchie ideology
which insisted that Mars must return to its original state,
that after all these years the terraforming project should be
allowed to fail. If the Earth's consensus was as powerful an
ally as the Ten Thousand Years claimed it to be, why was it afraid of the
living? For why else would it want to gather all
that lived into information space?
Guoquiang had fallen asleep while Lee had been thinking
on this. Xiao Bing came over and rummaged through his
pockets and at last came up with a pair of goggles. "It's your
last chance to check on the librarian," he said. "When we
get over the rim the reception will go."
Lee took the goggles. "I checked this morning." "It's a good program. It'll
find your parents."
"Thank you, Xiao Bing."
Xiao Bing bowed. "It was fun to make. But like all intelligence-mimicking
programs, it needs positive reinforcement.
It needs encouragement. I'm going to remember
some more desert before we start up off again," he added,
and wandered away.
Lee watched Xiao Bing ramble about for a while. Then he
snapped on the goggles, and information space scrolled up
even as he adjusted earpiece and patch microphone. The
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11

librarian turned to him, a massive book clasped across his
chest.