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

The swarm partially surrounded us now - but retained the brooding sense of
oneness.
"She told you all this?"
"Her demons did, yes." Wendigo tapped the side of her head. "I got a dose
after our ship crashed. You got one after we hit your ship. It was a
standard sporehead from our arsenal, but the Splinterqueen loaded it with
her own demons. For the moment that's how she speaks to us - via symbols
woven by demons."
"Take your word for it."
Wendigo shrugged. "No need to."
And suddenly I knew. It was like eavesdropping a topologist's fever dream
- only much stranger. The burst of Queen's speech couldn't have lasted
more than a tenth of a second, but its after-images seemed to persist much
longer, and I had the start of a migraine before it had ended. But like
Wendigo had implied before, I sensed planning - that every thought was
merely a step toward some distant goal, the way each statement in a
mathematical proof implies some final QED.
Something big indeed.
"You deal with that shit?"
"My chimeric parts must filter a lot."
"And she understands you?"
"We get by."
"Good," I said. "Then ask her about Yarrow."
Wendigo nodded and closed both eyes, entering intense rapport with the
Queen. What followed happened quickly: six of her components detaching
from the extended form and swarming into the train we had just exited. A
moment later they emerged with Yarrow, elevated on a loom formed from
dozens of wasp manipulators.
"What happens now?"
"They'll establish a physical connection to her neural demons," Wendigo
said. "So that they can map the damage."
One of the six reared up and gently positioned its blunt, anvil-shaped
'head' directly above Yarrow's frost-mottled scalp. Then the wasp made
eight nodding movements, so quickly that the motion was only a series of
punctuated blurs. Looking down, I saw eight bloodless puncture marks on
Yarrow's head. Another wasp replaced the driller and repeated the
procedure, executing its own blurlike nods. This time, glistening fibers
trailed from Yarrow's eight puncture points into the wasp, which looked as
if it was sucking spaghetti from my compatriot's skull.
Long minutes of silence followed, while I waited for some kind of report.
"It isn't good," Wendigo said eventually.
"Show me."
And I got a jolt of Queen's speech, feeling myself inside Yarrow's
hermetically sealed head, feeling the chill that had gasped against her
brain core, despite her pilot augs. I sensed the two intermingled looms of
native and foreign demons, webbing the shattered matrix of her
consciousness.
I also sensed - what? Doubt?
"She's pretty far gone, Spirey."
"Tell the Queen to do what she can."