"A. E. Van Vogt - The Rat & the Snake & Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Vogt A E)

habits. The habit of organic, or the habit of inorganic.
Electrons do not have life and un-life values. Atoms form
into molecules, there is a step in the process, one tiny step,
that is of lifeif life begins at all. One step, and then dark-
ness. Or aliveness.
A stone or a living cell. A grain of gold or a blade of
grass, the sands of the sea or the equally numerous ani-
malcules inhabiting the endless fishy watersthe difference is
there in the twilight zone of matter. Each living cell has in it
the whole form. The crab grows a new leg when the old
one is torn from its flesh. Both ends of the planarian worm
elongate, and soon there are two worms, two identities, two
digestive systems each as greedy as the original, each a
whole, unwounded, unharmed by its experience. Each cell
can be the whole. Each cell remembers in detail so intricate
that no totality of words could ever descibe the completeness
achieved.
Butparadoxmemory is not organic. An ordinary wax
record remembers sounds. A wire recorder easily gives up a
duplicate of the voice that spoke into it years before. Mem-
ory is a physiological impression, a mark on matter, a
change in the shape of a molecule, so that when a reaction
is desired the shape emits the same rhythm of response.
Out of the mummy's skull had come the multi-quadrillion
memory shapes from which a response was now being
evoked. As ever, the memory held true.
A man biinked, and opened his eyes.
"It is true, then," he said aloud, and the words were
translated into the Ganae tongue as he spoke them. "Death
is merely an opening into another lifebut where are my
attendants?" At the end, his voice took on a complaining
tone.
He sat up, and climbed out of the case, which had auto-
matically opened as he came to life. He saw his captors. He
froze, but only for a moment. He had a pride and a very
special arrogant courage, which served him now. Reluctantly,
he sank to his knees and made obeisance, but doubt must have
been strong in him. "Am I in the presence of the gods of
Egypt?" He climbed to his feet. "What nonsense is this? I
do not bow to nameless demons."
Captain Gorsid said, "Kill him!"
The two-legged monster dissolved, writhing in the beam of
a ray gun.
The second revived man stood up, pale, and trembled
with fear. "My God, I swear I won't touch the stuff again.
Talk about pink elephants"
Yoal was curious. "To what stuff do you refer, revived
one?"
"The old hooch, the poison in the hip pocket flask, the juice
they gave me at that speak . . . my lordie!"