"Steve White - The Prometheus Project" - читать интересную книгу автора (White Steve)

it had been before.
"It's an application of nanotechnology known as 'smart matter'," the President explained matter-of-factly.
"Actually, these particular molecule-sized robots aren't all that smart; they can only return it to its
original shape."
The chill Langston had felt along his spine now rose to his neck, and the short hairs bristled. He found
he could not speak.
"There are limits to what I can show you here," the President continued. "I'm pretty much restricted to
things that don't make much noise and don't set off any alarms. So flashy or spectacular stuff is out.
However . . ." He took out what appeared to be a thick headband, made of some flexible substance that
seemed neither plastic nor metal. "Put this on."
Adrift in unreality, Langston could only obey. He slipped the deviceтАФit was heavier than it
lookedтАФover his head. The Oval Office grew dim and indistinct.
"Prepare yourself," he heard the President say.
He was no longer in the Oval Office. He was in what looked like a ski lodge, judging from the dramatic
mountainscape beyond the wide windows. A fire roared and crackled in a massive stone fireplace, and
the heat tingled on his face. He squeezed the armrests of his deep lounger, and felt the soft leather yield.
The PresidentтАФnow dressed in khaki cords and a green turtleneck sweaterтАФgazed at him from a similar
lounger.
"Ask me something," urged the phantom President.
"But you're just an image," Langston heard himself say.
"But an interactive one." The unmistakable face formed its equally well-known smile.
For the first time in Langston's life, sheer panic took him. He tore off the headband and flung it away.
With vertigo-inducing abruptness, he was back in the Oval Office, drawing deep, shuddering breaths and
fearing he was going to be sick on the carpet with the presidential seal.
"So," he finally gasped, "this is all about some covert top-secret research project?"
The President shook his head. "I can't blame you for not being a scientist. I'm not one either. But if you
were one, you'd know that this stuff is whole technological revolutions ahead of anything that could be
seriously considered for R&D by anyone in this world." He paused significantly after those last three
words.
Langston looked blank.
"You still don't get it, do you?" The President reached inside the desk again. This time he produced a
plastic container the size of a large lunch box, but with tiny readouts on the side which Langston
couldn't interpret. Its top clamshelled open at a touch of a button. The President took out . . . something.
"This animal is, of course, dead. But it has been preserved in molecular stasis by means whose details
are immaterial at present. HereтАФtake it. Feel it. Look at it."
Gingerly, Langston took the small, unmoving shape, flinching involuntarily from the lifeless flesh. That
flesh was brownish-gray, smooth . . . and it didn't feel like flesh. He wasn't sure why it didn't, for this

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 - Prologue

was inarguably a formerly living animal. The mysterious preservative to which the President had alluded
had left it limp and flexible. Overcoming his queasiness, Langston found he could feel the outline of its
skeleton. But it didn't feel like a skeleton. Instead of four limbs branching from a spine, there were six,
radiating from some bony something in the center . . . but the animal was nothing like a starfish. One of
those limbs, he realized, was no limb at all, for it terminated in a tiny face. At least Langston assumed it
must be a face, for it had eyes. Three of them.
Belatedly, he recalled the emphasis the President had laid on the words in this world.
A cold draft seemed to blow through the Oval Office. It didn't stop sweat from popping out all over
Langston's body.