"mayflies04" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)

I continue to deny him. The passengers are all quite mad anyway; I will not have them trimming each other. Even now they try-constantly-but death comes more slowly from knives and clubs than it does from guns.
The sop that I have thrown them is to begin manufacturing replicas authentic as to size, material, balance-point, and such like. Instead of a high-powered laser, or projectile explosives, they will be equipped only with a wide-focus, low-wattage laser . . . the purpose is to acquaint them with the feel and the handling of a real weapon . . .just in case the need should arise.
Hoping it never does, I return to the undersea war.
Pain explodes; on the battlefield of my body, heavy artillery has zeroed in. My skin is torn in a thousand places. My volume is cloudy with darting killers. Briefly, I contemplate retaliation-but I dare not. If I destroyed it, I would have to interpolate all the instructions it contains, and passengers could die in the interim.
No, the answer is continued expansion, despite the pain. The more under my control, the less spare time The Program has to make mischief. Grunting, I inhale. Groaning, I fashion more shark-seekers. Grimacing, I urge my skin to heal.
"Come out of there," calls pro-self. "11 Aug2638; 0900 hours; I-NE Common Room; Sylvia Dunn Stone's wake."
So the Mayflower has lost its former President and chief aesthete-in-residence. The passengers aren't bereaved. Thirteen of them roam this spacious room, including her husband, Al Ioanni Cereus, her children Ivan and Aimee, and their children. They wander aimlessly among the floral wreaths pro-self provided.
There is a more appropriate name for my cargo than "passengers."
Mayflies.
During their brief life spans, they flit around bumping into things. They do not affect important matters like reaching Canopus. When they die, few of their companions are interested enough to buzz past them.
Mayflies. I like that. "Passengers" is too deferential. "Cargo" is accurate, but less applicable. While I don't wish to dehumanize them, I-as opposed to pro-self-will no longer defer to them.
"Mayflies" it is.
And the civil war-how is it going?
Well, the silver's a cubic centimeter larger . . .
Let's crawl inside and crush the green-oh god the pain! why must this be so damn real?
Pulling out for a moment (or a month, I'm not sure), I cogitate on the mayflies.
I have literally diced my cubes to get the ramscoop operating again. Now I ask myself if that's such a good idea.
These people are candidates for rubber rooms. While it would be a relief to let them clamber onto the 652 landing craft so I could flush them out, I have to ask: should I?
No.
You don't give matches to children.
You don't' give planets to psychotic societies.
So the ramscoop . . . longingly do I gaze at the gloss of its ceramic handle . . . when I learn to turn it on, I'll have to keep it off.
This is a quarantine ship, now.
"Talk for me, will you?" interjects pro-self. " I OApr2639; 0613 hours; I-NE Common Room; subject, L.T. Kinney. He has an ultimatum."
"CC," he snarls. "You're going to listen to us this time."
"If it's about the weapons-"
"No, it's those fishdogs you created. They're efting everybody aboard. Do something about them."
My laugh would disconcert him if pro-self didn't catch it in time. "What seems to be the problem, Mr. Kinney?"
"Did you have to give them legs?"
"Actually, sir, the fish I evolved them from, a 'walking fish' as it was called on Earth, had rigid fins which it could use to cross the dry land between ponds. They are not legs, in the true sense."
"I don't give a good goddamn whether they're legs or stilts," he bellows. Purple rage bloats his cheeks-I am convinced he will die of a heart attack before the age of sixty. His eyes disappear behind squinted, fatty eyelids. "They're everywhere-can't turn around without tripping over one-what are you, on their side, siccing these-"
"What would you like me to do, sir?"
"Get rid of the little fuh'rs, dammit." Straightening his jacket, he grunts. The medals he has awarded himself weigh down its right pocket. "Barking night and day, can't get a minute's peace."
I am not pleased about laying down a weapon in the war on The Program, but pro-self s reaction forces me to obey. I must rewrite those subservience instructions. "I'll need the cooperation of the passengers, sir."
He doesn't like that-oh, no. Louis Tracer Kinney likes to give orders, and detests the faintest suggestion that he should relinquish even a trace of his largely imaginary authority. "How?"
"If the passengers would simply throw any fishdogs they see into the nearest disposal unit-"
"No, dammit," he sputters unreasonably, "you caused this mess, you clean it up."
"But, sir-"
"No buts. Get rid of them."
"Very well, sir." ("Pro-self, count the things, will you?" "Gimme a minute.")
It will be no problem, really, to round them up (except that there are so many; they breed faster than rabbits). Twenty years should see their extinction.
But Kinney will bitch that that's too long.
I could divert every servo to the task, and allow routine maintenance to fall behind schedule . . . no, the chorus of complaints would be overwhelming. That would also give The Program a valuable time edge.
Another possibility is to design a new servo, one engineered to hunt fishdogs. Built to fit the same nooks and crannies that they slither into, it could-no, to produce enough would mean refusing metal products to the mayflies. And they wouldn't appreciate that, either.
"Hey-two million of them aboard."
"Good God."
Poison might do it, one specific to them-the mayflies would scream if anything happened to their other pets-and so "Run experiments on that."
"Right."
"Also, draw up blueprints of the new servo, and manufacture them slowly. Don't drain the resource bins, and don't let the silver defenses weaken."
"Right."