"Ian Watson - Ahead!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

and kidneys and retinas will disperse. My blood will be bottled for
transfusions. I imagine the anaesthetic as sweet, even though it will be
delivered by injection. I imagine the farewell kiss of the blade, even
though the anaesthetic will rob me of sensation. Farewell, Old Regime.
Welcome, the Revolution.

2: The Head War
Smell, first of all, as the primitive reptilian brain-root re-awakens: an
overpowering odour of hair-gel, though without any actual sensation of
breathing. No lungs to breathe with?
Taste: slick and sour-sweet.
Sound: high-speed warbling.
Tactile: soft pressure all around my head. Otherwise: nothing at all,
sheer absence.
Vision! Slightly wobbly, as if through liquid. There's a pyramid! It's
composed of decomposing heads. Squinting sidelong, I spy another pyramid
нн of whitened skulls.
And another, beyond it.
I must be hallucinating.
Or else information is being presented to me symbolically.
My viewpoint is rising up, disclosing yet more pyramids upon a flat white
plain, perhaps a salt-flat. Ovoids are airborne. Eggs hover and dart to
and fro. One of these floats close to me. The rounded bottom is opaque.
The transparent ellipsoid of the upper two-thirds contains a hairless
head, surely female. I believe that a clear gel wraps and cushions the
head. I must look likewise. Twin antennae protrude from the top of the
egg. She's a mobile disembodied head. I mouth at her, making my lips form
mute words. (Hullo. What's happening? Where are we?)
She mouths at me but I can't read her lips. No thoughts transmit from
those antennae to what I presume must be my own corresponding overhead
antennae. Her egg-vehicle begins to swing away. I urge mine to follow but
it continues onward lazily under its own impetus.
Can this white vista, with its menacing pyramids and its hovering heads,
be actual? How can this be? Surely my head is being used. What seems to be
happening is not what is really happening. It is a by-product.
Of a sudden two head-vehicles rush directly at one another. They collide
and burst open. Briefly two faces kiss bruisingly while spilling gel hangs
down elastically. Moment later both vehicles plummet down to the
salt-flat. There they shatter entirely. Both heads roll out, surely
oblivious by now.
From under the surface, two mobile crab-like devices emerge. In their
claws they seize the heads. They scuttle towards a fledgling pyramid.
Clambering, they nudge the heads into position, upright, where I suppose
they will rot.
The female egg hasn't gone away, after all. It нн or rather she нн is
swinging back towards me. At least I think that it is the selfsame egg.
Now it's picking up speed. It's rushing at me. Will we shatter, and kiss
hideously, and fall? I'm terrified.
At the very last moment, my vehicle tilts. I'm staring upward at blue sky
and high wispy clouds. A fierce blow strikes my base. Such a stunning