"Kevin O'Donnel Jr. - The Journeys of McGill Feighan 01 - Caverns" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)

translucent membrane, "I fine am. Much thank. Need water."
"Restroom's to your right as you leave the Booth, then follow the signs to
the Customs area." With a friendly salute, it disappeared.
The gastropod creaked out the door, found the lavatory, and turned on
the faucet not a moment too soon. It was already collapsing from thirst as
the first drops of water dampened its forelimb. It sucked. And grew enough
to reach another sink. It gulped. It grew. Before too long, water splashed in
every basin while the being lay on the dirty floor and distended like a
sausage skin being stuffed.
Eighty-seven thousand kilograms of water later, it burped, shut off the
taps, and wriggled out of the restroom. Six aliens waited angrily outside; two
had embarrassed themselves because they hadn't been able to get in.
"Apologies," it flashed, "death/life at stake." And it flowed past, ignoring
their attempts to continue the dispute.
Down the hall, it submitted to a full-body scan, and cleared Customs with
minimal trouble. In exchange for a 50 FNC deposit, a guarantee that it had a
ticket off Earth, the Immigrations official affixed a visa to its passchip. When
the last strand of red tape had fallen away and freed it, it snaked outside and
emptied a passing garbage truck. Then it consulted the road map in the
memory molecule its master had provided.
Unsure of how to begin, it waved an ochre pseudohand at a gesticulating
biped, one whose starred cap and three-meter height suggested authority.
Five minutes elapsed before it realized the biped was a computer-generated
simulacrum. Then, locating the sensors in the generator pedestal, it pressed
its membrane against a camera to ask, "Way which to Van Wyck
Expressway?"
"Where are you headed?" monotoned the light sculpture.
"Cleveland," it replied, in boldface Gothic type. "Take I Van Wyck to
Cross-Bronx to Interstate 80, correct?"
"Correct, butтАФ" The police-sim delineated the height and breadth
requirements for highway travelers, which the alien far exceeded. "You're
too wide!"
"Problem no," it flashed. "Watch!" After a touch of tinkering, it had
shortened and narrowed itself, although the redistributed flesh lengthened it
to a good twenty meters. It would grow some more once it got some food in
its belly. "Okay is?"
"What about your speed? The law sets a 60 kph minimum."
"Can do." More bioengineering produced 15 pair of two-meter high
wheels, as well as a waver in the cop-sim while the computer searched for
the appropriate program. "Side by side me," it wrote, "and measure."
The simulacrum, now fuzzy around the edges, simply waved a hand and
said, "I believe you. Take off. Have a nice trip, and welcome to New York
City."
It set out at once.
The 800-odd kilometers to Cleveland were among the smoothest of its
recent excursions. It covered them in just over twelve hours, though the
Pennsylvania hillsides tempted it with spring. For a while it weighed
rumbling off the road and disappearing into the forests, where delicate buds
fattened on the branches, but it had its mission. The Far Being had specified
how it should spend its time on this planet, minute for minute almost, and