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

"No!" I say, "no! He's wrong! She's not responsible!" but they don't hear. They are shouting too loudly.
The nearest servo-a Mobile Medical Unit-reaches 61-SEA-9 in fifteen seconds. Too late. Through the door the instructions wouldn't let me lock, they have thrust Lela into the clouded corridor. Nothing I can do will help her . . . except having the MMU wring her neck, that her last moments will be less agonized.
Then I turn on Sandacata. If pro-self weren't resisting. I'd term him, but the damn passenger-protection circuits limit my retaliation to a snarled. "You're scum, Sandacata, scum!"
His laugh is scornful, until I run, on his living room HV unit, a fifteen-minute tape I'd taken of him in the closet, with his wife's underwear and the family cat. The neighbors smirk, though they touch their amulets while a few mutter incantations. And he, screaming, drives them out of his suite. His empty suite.
Maybe pro-self is right-to humiliate him could be better.
For the moment, I have to concentrate on something clean.
Looking into God's marble ring, I marvel at the delicacy of incredible masses seen from 100 light years-and quake with fear. Teaching myself to relax with space seems hopeless, though once I almost succeeded . . . but the mind-rapers . . . sixty-six years since they left . . . how much longer will it be before I can gaze out without paralyzing trepidation?
And as I stare, trying not to flinch and flee inwards, a match is struck in a dark field ten million kilometers ahead. An alien. Pro-self reacts without consultation: squelch the transmissions, shut the portholes (memory records, 29Mar2666; 2146 hours; alien), Christ, the only closer one's come was January, 2600, let me look through my strongeyes-
Sleek silver needle, five hundred meters long, thirty in diameter, sparkling like a Christmas tree, broadcasting-swivel the ears, here-up and down the spectrum, all the modulations are the same, but untranslatable. It's an alien message, and I'm a human.
Jittery. I tape it. Analysis is beyond me, though perhaps not beyond cool, collected pro-self, who never knows fear (or love or joy, for that matter), and whose ice therefore gleams without flaw.
While my strongeyes cling to the stranger like a bird's to a cobra, I shiver.
Why the hell did Earth send me out here?
And the war is such a long way from being won . . . let me turn from my terrors to supervise some servos. Not that they need it-but that I do. I need to deal with entities that do not insist on lengthy justifications which they ignore once they've heard them. I need time away from humanity. It is getting on my nerves.
The servos are reforesting 1 New England Park: elm and oak, sweet slopes of sugar maple, white pine and Norway spruce . . . in forty or fifty years the park will be beautiful again, but until then, balancing the ecology will be tricky. For example, if there are no clearings where deer can graze, they'll eat the seedlings . . .
Pro-self says, "3May2668; 1203 hours; see Omar Williams; 18-NW-C-1."
I split the screen to watch the incongruous beauty of a gleaming servo planting a pine, while I also look into Williams' sullen face. Seated before a wall encrusted with hex signs-to avert 'them'-he looks like a prizefighter nursing a grudge. "Yes, Mr. Williams?"
"You've got to get us down on a planet."
How many times have I explained all the reasons why I can't? Williams is a monomaniac. Damned if I put up with him any more.
"Pack it, Mr. Williams," I snap, and return to the park.
Where I am unable to concentrate, so filling is the realization that I have overridden the programming.
I can't believe it.
Check the tapes. Yes, yes, I did say that, despite standing orders to treat all passengers with equal courtesy. Neither a life-nor a mission-threatening situation, it was a conversation in which I insulted a mayfly, and one ended without his permission.
The implications are awesome. My mind is awhirl with possibilities.
To the silver and green, then, to the inner dimension where they mimic the yin-yang symbol. Bypassing them, I reach for the ramscoop switch-and char my knuckles. Cursing, I kick the fixed eye. It won't even blink.
"Pro-self," I call, puzzled, "how did I do that?"
"Your field strength slammed me to the ground, squelched my etiquette circuits, and would have burned-them out completely if I hadn't let you make an ass of yourself." Its anger buzzes like a short.
Pondering that, I slip into the sphere. It does feel strong; it hums with health and vitality. I look around. The switch and the eye are outside. So are parts of Central Kitchens, Central Medical, Central Stores . . . what's this? Ventilation fans-no, pro-self, hackles raised, is wrapped all around that one. This?
Darkness swallows the ship. Wails of terror rise to my microphones. "It's them!" "Where's my charm?" "0m mani padme . . . " A flip-switch clicks the infra-red lenses into place; hot outlines swarm into the corridors, screaming at our ears, beating on the walls . . . pro-self is restive; their hysteria is an itch he must scratch with the appropriate program.
"Please," it asks, "let me turn on the lights again?"
I am not cruel. Besides, what bothers him bothers me. "All right."
"What the hell happened?" demands Williams' familiar voice. "Was it-"
I gaze into his round brown face. "I turned off the lights."
"Why?" he barks.
"To see if I could do it."
"Why?" but this time the word is confused, not outraged.
"Because you mayflies won't take the time to learn how to reprogram me, that's why. I'm trying to do it myself, but believe me, it is a lot harder to do it from the inside than from the out."
"Mayflies?"
"Mayflies. I define them as: 'Any human of the order Sapiens, having delicate brains used primarily for dreaming up requests with which to plague the Central Computer, and having a brief life span.' Satisfied?"
"Hundred and twenty years is brief?"
"To me," I say flatly.
"Yeah, well . . . " A crowd has gathered; his pride is on the line. As chief civil officer of the Mayflower, even if he achieved that position through manipulation and force of arms, he can't allow himself to receive a computer's condescension. At least not in public. "Listen, CC, I give the orders around here, is that clear?"
A wave of exultation washes forth: "Not to me, Williams."
"You'll do what I goddamn well tell you to, or else-"
"Or else what?" I sneer. "You'll hold your breath till you turn blue?"
"No dammit, we'll-we'll-"
A woman pushes herself to the forefront. A thin, slatternly woman with straggly brown hair and a sallow complexion, Irma Tracer, Louis Kinney's seventy-three-year-old sister. Her nose drips constantly; even now a clear droplet swells until its weight pulls it free. She wipes its residue, studies the back of her hand, and then shrills, "We'll clear you is what we'll do. CC. You think you're safe-well, you're not! We're people, not machines, and we're smarter than you can ever be!" The crowd applauds-people like to be praised, even by an egregious liar.
Pro-self would not prohibit telling them that I, too, am human-and at least 3.3 percent smarter than any of them-but claim kinship with her? She and her kind make one ashamed of one's species.
I say nothing. The crowd murmurs to itself; clearly audible are lines like: "Boy, did she tell it off!"
And as luck would have it, a servo chooses this moment to rumble down the corridor. Tracer's watery gray eyes glow, with madness and murder, with egocentrism and xenophobia. "Get it!" she screams. The crowd dissolves into a frenzy like that of fishdogs on a bison.
Briefly, pro-self centers our awareness within the servo itself, thinking thus to free it more easily. But it has already been captured. Even its enormous strength is insufficient. While we are in it, its extrusions are torn off-it topples backwards-we leave and the speakers shake the hallway with: "STOP THAT AT ONCE!"