"Mary A. Turzillo - Thumbkin, Caesar, Princess, and Troll" - читать интересную книгу автора (Turzillo Mary A)

*Thumbkin, Caesar, Princess, and Troll* by Mary A. Turzillo
Let no one accuse this of being a tall tale!
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Thomas Maximilian Abraham Augustus Grand yearned for a woman who could
hold him in the palm of her hand. No lesser consort would fulfill his dreams.
His twelve centimeters would complement her meter and three quarters.
Thomas Grand, or Thumbkin, as the media later called him, was a man
born before his time. His parents, Doctors Pete and Polly Grand, had wanted an
astronaut's career for their son, and so conspired to conceive a baby who, at
maturity, would stand only twelve centimeters tall. Future space missions,
they believed, would be crewed by people who massed less than two hundred
grams.
Thumbkin exceeded expectations. His body had matured fast, with fewer
cell divisions, hence fewer total cells. Thanks to clever genetic engineering,
a far greater proportion of his brain could be devoted to higher cognitive
skills -- symbol manipulation and spatial perception. And a smaller, more
neotenous brain enhanced his synaptic firing speed -- a determinant of
intelligence.
But shortly after Thumbkin's twelfth birthday, public opinion turned
Luddite; factory workers overran and trashed nanotech labs. In such a climate,
Congress cut space and science funding to the bone. Further, existing
astronauts formed unions and fought the genetic engineering of the mouse-sized
astronauts who might spoil their own chances at the planets.
They only succeeded in destroying the space program. Little guys like
Tom Grand would have been affordable crew on a mission to Mars; the big guys
spoiled it for everybody.
Truth was, Thumbkin didn't much want to be an astronaut. He preferred
inner space -- the submolecular world.
True, nanotechnology had a really bum rap, hysteria spilling over from
the furor over genetically modified foods. But, following his own dream,
Thumbkin enrolled in one of the rare nanotech Ph.D. programs still left in the
country, at Buckeye State. His own condition was not due to nanotechnology,
but a simple in-utero hormone treatment. He was lucky; his only deformities
were an outsized nose, disproportionally large feet, and genitalia to match.
Of the last, he never really could conduct a comparison, since he was the only
man of his height in the Midwest, although several others lived in California,
and one or two in east Asia.
In the lab at Buckeye, he had his problems. He always had to get his
partner to lift him up to the computer or the lab table, though he petitioned
for a ladder. Once level with the instruments, he scampered nimbly about,
jumping from key to key to program the atomic force microscope. Once he was
trapped in a chamber of self-replicating Penrose tiles, and saved his own life
by hanging from the lid while the crazy quilt of polygons surged around his
feet.
His professors had to read his exams with a microscope. They often
tried to psychoanalyze him, saying he only went into nanotech because he'd
otherwise never get to work with anything smaller than he was.
One sympathetic professor, a buxom brunette who inspired in Thumbkin a