"Robert Reed - Due" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

news, of course. Our plant is more than tenthousand shifts old, and over time
these bugs acquire mutations. Subtle failuresof control. And a nasty tendency
toward laziness.With an iridium hammer, I smack the emergency kill
switch.Diamond chains and matching gears come to a grudging halt.What next? I
wonder.Maintenance should be told -- that's policy -- but Maintenance means
slowsolutions and acidic, accusing questions.Hanging beside the oven are a
suit and helmet and boots. Each is made fromantigen-free mock-bone. That's how
we fool the oven and its bugs. And they haveto be fooled, or they'll assume
that an intruder is just another raw material --a collection of soulless atoms
waiting to be gnawed to nothingness, one atom ata time.Bugs can't recognize a
helping hand.They're stupid, and dangerous, and I despise them.Mollene returns
while I'm dressing. With her voice and a touch, she tells me,"Darling, please
be careful."You don't rise to foreman without knowing caution, at least now
and then.The oven doors are gold-faced bone, heavy and slick. The chamber
beyond isfuriously hot and singing with bugs. Most of the mindless bastards
are too smallto see. Bristling with jointed arms and bucky-tube mouths, they
build perfectfibers of proteins and plastics, ceramics and shape-memory
metals. Other bugs,larger by a thousandfold, knit the fibers together. Then
the largest few extrudethe resins that finish the bone, creating a simple
perfect and wondrously strongskeleton worthy of Him.Duty grabs me, forcing me
deeper into the oven.The closest sheet of new bone is gray-black and brittle,
its corner shatteringwith a touch of my gloved hand.I crawl beneath the bone,
then look up.Clinging to the oven's ceiling, to one of the oven's bug-wombs,
is some sort ofphage, round and jeweled with spikes and sucking mouth parts.
Climbing onto thediamond belt, I reach high with one hand. But as I grab the
phage, it strikesback, a stream of brownish fluid rolling thick down my arm,
making it tastewrong. Making it seem dangerous.The oven panics, marshaling
every defense against the intruder.My arm is the intruder.I wrench the phage
loose, then I'm running in a cowardly stoop, fleeing across adozen standards
of tangled and rasping bug heaven.My suit is pierced. A burning begins on my
hand and forearm, then the pain fallsto nothing in the most terrible way.
Glancing down, I see a ragged stump that'sbeing gnawed shorter by the instant,
an army of tiny sparkling flecks trying tokill me.The phage lies on the floor
behind me.Using my good hand, I grab it. But more of that damned juice leaks
out,splattering wildly, the bugs launching a second assault, happily gnawing
away myfinal hand.I have nothing left to hold with.The phage drops in front of
me, and with more luck than skill, I kick it,sending it flying through a gap
in the doorway. Then I stagger out after it --what is left of me -- my arms
shrunk to wagging stumps and my helmethalf-digested. But I see Mollene
standing in the golden light, waiting for mewith those lovely breasts; and if
I wasn't half-dead and repulsive, I would kissher breasts. And I'd kiss
Tannie's tiny ones. That's how good and how awful Ifeel.Poor Jusk, I tell
myself.Nearly murdered, and desperate for the saving taste of love... !"You'll
like these arms," the man promises, not caring the slightest about whatI like
or don't like. "They're good arms, mostly."I don't know him. He wears
extra-thick flesh like everyone in Maintenance, and asolid broad face, and
judging by the smooth, unworn condition of his hands, he'svery young. A
novice, at best. No one else is free to work on me, what with thebug oven
damaged and nobody sure how bad it is."How do the arms feel?""Wrong," I
admit."Lift them. And again." His careful adjustments make everything worse.