"Peter Watts - Home" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watts Peter)

contribution, we need people who can live under a certain kind of
stress without going, you know...
And she says okay, okay, just fucking do it.
And the worms burrow into her chest, devour her soft parts
and replace them with hard-edged geometries of plastic and metal
that cut her insides.
And then dark cold, life without breath, four thousand meters of
black water pressing down like a massive sheltering womb...
"Judy, will you just for God's sake talk to me? Is your vocoder
broken? Can't you answer?"
Her whole body is shaking. She can't do anything except watch
her hand rise, an autonomous savior, to take the black skin floating
around her face. The reptile presses edges together, here, and here.
Hydrophobic side chains embrace; a slippery black caul stitches
itself back together over rotten flesh. Muffled voices rage faintly
inside.
"Judy, please just wave or something! Judy, what are you тАФ
where are you going?"
It doesn't know. All it's ever done is travel to this place. It's
forgotten why.
"Judy, you can't wander too far away... don't you remember, our
instruments can't see very well this close to an active riftтАФ"
All it wants is to get away from the noise and the light. All it
wants is to be alone again.
"Judy, wait тАФ we just want to helpтАФ"
The harsh artificial glare fades behind it. Ahead there is only the
sparse twinkle of living flashlights.
A faint realization teeters on the edge of awareness and washes
away forever:
She knew this was home years before she ever saw an ocean.