"Michael Swanwick - Trojan Horse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

"Rot in hell, you cancer."
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html




"I beg your pardon?"



Elin did not respond, and after a puzzled silence Tory continued: ' 'I'm leaving your sensorium operative,
so when I switch you over, I want you to pay attention to your sur-roundings. Okay?"



The second Trojan horse came on. Everything changed.



It wasn't a physical change, not one that could be seen with the eyes. It was more as if the names for
everything had gone away. A knee-tall oak grew nearby, very much like the one she had crushed
accidentally in New Detroit when she had lost her virginity many years ago. And it meant nothing to her.
It was only wood growing out of the ground.



A mole poked its head out of its burrow, nose crinkling, pink eyes weak. It was just a small, biological
machine. "Whooh," she said involuntarily. "This is awfully cold."



"Bother you?"



Elin studied him, and there was nothing there. Only a human being, as much an object as the oak, and no
more. She felt nothing toward or against him. "No," she said.



"We're getting a good recording." The words meant noth-ing; they were clumsy, devoid of content.



In the grass around her, Elin saw a gray flickering, as if it were all subtly on fire. Logically she knew the
flickering was the firing of nerves in the rods and cones of her eyes, but emotionally it was something else:
It was time. A gray fire that destroyed the world constantly, eating it away and re-making it again and
again.