"Peter Watts - Bulk Food" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watts Peter)

No floppy-fin syndrome here, no siree. This isn't the old days.
The show is due to start momentarily. Doug uses the time to go
over the plan once more. Twenty seconds from tongue to gallery.
Another thirty-five to the gift shop. Fifty-five seconds total, if he
doesn't run into anyone. Perhaps sixty if he does. He'll beat them
all. Doug Largha is a man on a mission.
A fanfare from the poolside speakers. A perky blonde emerges
through a sudden hole in the coastal facade, wearing the traditional
garb of the order: white shorts and a ducky blue staff shirt. An
odd-looking piece of electronics hangs off her belt. A headset
mike arcs across one cheek. The crowd cheers.
Behind the blonde, some Japanese guy hovers in the wings with
an equally-Japanese kid of about twelve. The woman waves them
on deck as she greets the audience.
"Good afternoon!" she chirps resoundingly over the speakers.
"Welcome to the aquarium, and welcome to today's whale show!"
More applause.
"Our special guest today is Tetsuo Yamamoto, and his father,
Herschel." The woman raises one arm over the water. "And our
other special guest is, of course, Shamu!"
4 Peter Watts

Doug snorts. They're always called Shamu. The Aquarium
doesn't put much thought into naming killer whales these days.
"My name is Ramona, and I'll be your naturalist today." She
waits for applause. There isn't much, but she acknowledges it like
a standing ovation and goes into patter. "Now of course, we've
been able to understand Orcan ever since The Breakthrough, but
we still can't speak itтАФat least, not without some very expensive
hardware to help us with the higher frequencies. Fortunately our
state-of-the-art translation software, developed right here at the
Aquarium, lets our species talk to each other. I'll be asking Shamu
to do some behaviors especially so Tetsuo here can interact with
him."
Figures the kid would be center stage. Probably some Japanese
rite of passage. Number One Son looks like a typical clumsy
thumb-fingered preadolescent. This could be the day.
"As you may have learned from our award-winning educational
displays," Ramona continues brightly, "our coast is home to two
different orca societies, Residents and Transients. Both societies
are ruled by the oldest femalesтАФthe MatriarchsтАФbut beyond that
they have don't have much in common. In fact, they actively hate
each other."
A rhythmic stomping begins from somewhere in the crowd.
Ramona cranks up the smile and the volume, and forges ahead.
Research and Education: that's the aquarium's motto, and they're
sticking to it. You don't get to the good stuff until you've learned
something.
"Now we've known since the nineteen-seventies that Transients
hunt seals, dolphins, even other whales, while the Residents feed