"Linda Nagata - Vast" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nagata Linda)

automated ships have proven adaptive. So Nikko has adapted too. He cannot outrun the courser or
match its guns, but on Null Boundary's hull he has grown his own layer of Chenzeme philosopher cells,
forever dreaming their simulated strategies of war and conquest.
The cells are an intellectual machine. Not so much a mind, as a billion dedicated minds in
competition, gambling their opinions. Approval means more and stronger connections to neighboring
cells. Disapproval means an increasing isolation. Links are made and shattered a thousand times a second
and long-chain alliances are continuously renegotiated. Consensus is sought but seldom found.
This is the clumsy system that guides the Chenzeme warships. Nikko thinks on it, and he doesn't
know whether to laugh or to weep in terror.
He suspects he has done both ten thousand times before. It's been twenty-two years since he
learned to live within the skin of his enemy. Null Boundary's hull has gleamed white all that time, a
skin-deep Chenzeme masquerade.
If nothing else, this ruse has bought time. Though the courser has not been persuaded to turn
away, it seems unsure, as if its instincts have been confused by Null Boundary's metamorphosis.
Seventeen years ago it ceased to accelerate. Yet because its velocity is slightly greater than Null
Boundary's, the gap between the two ships continues to narrow. In another 125 days Null Boundary will
fall within range of its gamma ray laser.
That is Nikko's deadline. He must convince the courser of his authenticity before then, and
persuade it to leave them alone. In the ship's library, an army of subminds is dedicated to the problem,
interpreting and reinterpreting every record of Chenzeme communication to uncover all identifying codes
Nikko has used the results in repeated attempts to contact the courser, but to no effectтАФit has never
answered his radio hails.
He adds one more submind to stew upon the problem, while instructing a Dull Intelligence to
continue the observations. He will be unable to do so himself, as his present existence is limited to ninety
seconds. At the end of this time, if nothing has gone wrong, his personal memory of the period will be
dumped and a new interval will begin, so that from his point of view, Null Boundary's transit time will
seem to require only ninety seconds, though years have elapsed. This is Nikko's defense against
boredom.
Point twenty: Additional subminds report in. Their assessments are pleasingly dull. Reactor
function is nominal. Air quality is nominal. Crew health: nominal. There are only three crew members.
Four, if Nikko counts his own rarely used physical incarnation. He finds Lot and Urban awake and
active; only Clemantine still hibernates in a cold storage nest.
Point thirty: Nikko scans Null Boundary with remote eyes. He discovers Urban in the library,
linked to an interface that records the activity of the philosopher cells. Urban insists that with practice and
refinement, the interface can be made to translate the cell's chemical language into something meaningful
to a human mind Nikko doesn't agree. Experience has taught him that Chenzeme language finds meaning
only within Chenzeme neural structures.
This is something Lot understands. He is in a transit bubble just beneath the ship's hull. One side
of the bubble is open, so that he lies squeezed against the underside of the colony of philosopher cells.
He's dressed in an insulating skin suit, but the hood is down. His close-cropped blond hair shines in the
cells' white light. On his cheeks are moist sensory glands that look like glistening teardrops. These
"sensory tears" are a Chenzeme structure, integrated into the genetic system of Lot's ancestors by some
unknown engineer, thousands of years in the past. Through them, Lot can perceive the cells' chemical
language and respond in kind, with molecules synthesized in the tears' nanoscale factories.
The philosopher cells are Lot's creation, and he is still the only one who can effectively
communicate with them. He mined their design from the living dust of Deception Well's nebula, storing
the pattern in his fixed memory, a data vault contained within the filamentous strands of the Chenzeme
neural organ that parasitizes his brain. Nothing degrades in fixed memory. Lot used the pattern to
synthesize a seed population of philosopher cells within his neural tendrils, exuding them through the
shimmery surfaces of his sensory tears. It's a neatly circular survival strategy in which the parasitic tendrils