"Alastair Reynolds - Spirey And The Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

the complete wasp. The fused pair looked to have been smothered in molten
bronze, left to dry in waxy nodules.
"You know what this is?" Wendigo asked.
"I'm waiting."
"Wasp art."
I looked at her.
"This wasp was destroyed mid-replication," Wendigo continued. "While it
was giving birth. Evidently the image has some poignancy for them. How I'd
put it in human terms I don't know..."
"Don't even think about it."
I followed her across the marbled terrazzo which floored the chamber.
Arched porticos surrounded it, each of which held a single dead wasp,
their body designs covering a hundred generations of evolution. If Wendigo
was right, I supposed these dead wasps were the equivalent of venerated
old ancestors peering from oil paintings. But I wasn't convinced just yet.
"You knew this place existed?"
She nodded. "Or else we'd be dead. The wasps back in the Royalist
stronghold told us we could seek sanctuary here, if home turned against
us."
"And the wasps - what? Own this place?"
"And hundreds like it, although the others are already far beyond the
Swirl, on their way out to the halo. Since the wasps came to
consciousness, most of the splinters flung out of the Swirl have been
infiltrated. Shrewd of them - all along, we've never suspected that the
splinters are anything other than cosmic trash."
"Nice decor, anyway."
"Florentine," Wendigo said, nodding. "The frescos are in the style of a
painter called Masaccio; one of Brunelleschi's disciples. Remember, the
wasps had access to all the cultural data we brought with us from GE -
every byte of it. That's how they work, I think - by constructing things
according to arbitrary existing templates."
"And there's a point to all this?"
"I've been here precisely one day longer than you, Spirey."
"But you said you had friends here; people who could help Yarrow."
"They're here alright," Wendigo said, shaking her head. "Just hope you're
ready for them."
On some unspoken cue they emerged, spilling from a door which until then
I'd mistaken for one of the surrounding porticos. I flinched, acting on
years of training. Although wasps have never intentionally harmed a human
being - even the enemy's wasps - they're nonetheless powerful, dangerous
machines. There were twelve of them; divided equally between Standardist
and Royalist units. Six-legged, their two-meter long, segmented alloy
bodies sprouted weapons, sensors and specialized manipulators. So far so
familiar, except that the way the wasps moved was subtly wrong. It was as
if the machines choreographed themselves, their bodies defining the
extremities of a much larger form which I sensed more than saw.
The twelve whisked across the floor.
"They are - or rather it is - a queen," Wendigo said. "From what I've
gathered, there's one queen for every splinter. Splinterqueens, I call
them."