"Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon The Deep (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vinge Vernor)

"Of course they suspect. But what can they do? It's an old evil they've wakened.
Till it's ready, it will feed them lies, on every camera, in every message from
home."

Thought ceased for a moment as a shadow passed across the nodes they used. The
overness was already greater than anything human, greater than anything humans
could imagine. Even its shadow was something more than human, a god trolling
for nuisance wildlife.

Then the ghosts were back, looking out upon the school yard underground. So
confident the humans, a little village they had made here.

"Still," thought the hopeful one, the one who had always looked for the craziest
outs, "we should not be. The evil should long ago have found us."

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 A Fire Upon the Deep



"The evil is young, barely three days old."

"Still. We exist. It proves something. The humans found more than a great evil in
this archive."

"Perhaps they found two."

"Or an antidote." Whatever else, the overness was missing some things and
misinterpreting others. "While we exist, when we exist, we should do what we
can." The ghost spread itself across a dozen workstations and showed its
companion a view down an old tunnel, far from human artifacts. For five billion
years it had been abandoned, airless, lightless. Two humans stood in the dark
there, helmets touching. "See? Sjana and Arne conspire. So can we."

The other didn't answer in words. Glumness. So the humans conspired, hiding in
darkness they thought unwatched. But everything they said was surely tattled back
to the overness, if only by the dust at their feet.

"I know, I know. Yet you and I exist, and that should be impossible too. Perhaps
all together, we can make a greater impossibility come true." Perhaps we can hurt
the evil newly born here.

A wish and a decision. The two misted their consciousness across the local net,
faded to the faintest color of awareness. And eventually there was a plan, a
deception -- worthless unless they could separately get word to the outside. Was
there time still for that?