"Charles Stross - The Boys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

not looking at her: "I'm not prepared to forcibly digitise the entire human biomass of the
System to suit an ideological goal. When we designed the boys тАУ"
"тАУ Who were 'we'?" she butted in, gripped by a sense of deja vu.
He stared at her and yawned. "You just want to confirm this, don't you?" he said. "We
were the Posthuman Front, the society for synthetic intelligence. The Islamic Corporate
Shogunate was an experimental deployment for the revolution; fanatical cyborgs. Some of
them were the wild boys and some of them were less obvious, like the hunters. They knew
that when they died they'd be preserved in the dreamtime; their job was to forcibly integrate
all reactionary elements. Very successful, I might add: most of the neuroplants in this world
are part of the mind-support system. But it didn't work out too well." Ben paused, head
bowed; the boy looked at him accusingly.
"The ecosystem was damaged during the revolution; it began to shut down," said the
boy. "We stayed on in hope of finding transport to another world where we could integrate,
but evidently there was a quarantine pact; all the exfiltrators lost contact. And then Ben
reprogrammed that blasted Hunter тАУ the only surviving one, we exported all the other clones
тАУ on our collective ass to keep us from getting enough slack ..." He shook his alloy-framed
head. "Unless those early cadres succeeded, the revolution was an abortion. Any idea how
many humans want what's on offer?" He snorted, disgustedly.
Nike looked at him enigmatically. "Yes," she said; "I have. I've seen it at first hand."
"Why are you here?" asked the boy. Nike shrugged.
"My people aren't very popular out there," she said. "We need some where to go; the
Deconstructivists are pushing in everywhere, and we've lost ground so heavily that unless we
find a closed habitat we'll be forced to condense in order to prevent mass defections."
"Deconstructivists?" said Ben. "What are they?"
"Human revenants. You honestly don't want to know," she said. It was so tiring, being
on edge like this: even the wild boys didn't seem threatening enough to justify keeping her
defenses on edge. "We just can't compete." A soft rain was falling outside, pattering through
the hole in the wall.
"And who are you?" probed the boy, looking for completeness.
"Can't you guess?" she complained. "You've had it easy with your smug mind-games
and your revolution in one habitat! Don't you see?" The wind ghosted through the house like
the soul of history, ruffling her hair. "We tried to carry the revolution through outside the
closed habitat, we fought for a century ..." She stared into reflective distances, eyes like dark
mirrors, resembling her mind.
" ... but we lost."

The Hunter was wandering, adrift in an ocean of despair, when she came across
Valentin Zero. Her video surfaces were locked into the sonic images of a fruit bat in free fall;
when she saw something unusual she tensed instinctively. Could it be a boyish thing, here in
the axial zone? A surge of conditioned reflexes drowned her nervous system in adrenalin and
hatred; but as the bat approached the object it resolved into three components, all too small.
Her skulls couldn't find a meaning for it. Drifting into a close approach, she noted three
cylinders and a bushy twirl of vegetation. Modified axons in the bat's ears recognized vague
high-frequency emissions, the fingerprint of molecular-scale processors; it had to be
intelligent.
"Hello unidentified structure," she squeaked through the ultrasonic larynx of the bat.
"Talk to me."
The structure began to rotate, sluggishly; the bat picked up another object, the
vibrating flight surfaces of an insect. An eye swam into view, shielded by a triangular leaf. The
bat screamed; something was scanning down its nervous system, trying to locate the hunter's