"David Wingrove - Assimilation(1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wingrove David)

That scent...
He closed his eyes, then forced himself on. When his hand brushed against
the bars he stopped and opened his eyes again, looking down into the cot.
It was sleeping; its long, insectile body tucked deep inside the burrow.
He studied it a moment, filled with loathing, then looked across at the
ragged teddy bear that lay nearby. For a moment everything seemed normal;
then, as he watched, a tiny grub pushed out from the soft fur of the
bear's well-rounded stomach, followed a moment later by a second.
He held on to the rail of the cot a moment, steadying himself, fighting
the fear that had been bred into him, then, knowing what he had to do,
pulled himself up over the side and crouched beside the hole, drawing the
long knife from his boot.
It was a lie. Every last bit of it. Especially that part about them
finding this world in a ruined state. They had done that. The Exops. They
had sent one of their number down here, supposedly to trade, but in
reality it had come to learn about the state of Earth's defences. Then,
when it knew enough, it had slipped away in the night, ignoring the decoy
ship it had left them guarding, using a cloak of a special material made
by a race they had conquered millennia before to beam it back aboard their
flagship. That ship was one of a fleet of eighty parked in Earth orbit,
shielded from Earth's defensive probes by technology stolen from yet
another race.
He nodded to himself. This here -н this obscene parody -н was something he
had seen on many worlds now. For the Exops -н exopterygotes -н were really
little more than a sophisticated form of parasite: the locusts of the
galaxy. First they would destroy the indigenous culture and then they
would replace it, mimicking the forms they destroyed, assimilating the
culture.
He felt the bile rise in his throat, then lifted the long knife and thrust
it down into the creature's head, leaning his whole weight on it as the
creature woke and struggled to push up out of its burrow. For a brief
while longer it struggled silently, its artificial larynx severed, its
brain leaking vital fluids, and then, with a shudder that ran right up his
arm, it died. Ka-Ta twisted the knife savagely, then stood back from it,
breathing heavily.
It was unnecessary, dangerous even, yet he felt much better for it.
Clambering back over the bars, he hurried across the room, then down the
stairs, hearing their chatter from the drawing room as he crossed the long
hallway, heading for the front door.
Outside it was dark, the church vaguely outlined against the star-strewn
sky. Further down the lane a solitary gas lamp threw its light across the
front of a cottage. Down there was the ship he'd come in, but he didn't
need it now. He leaned forward, popping the light filters from his eyes,
then took the neatly folded cloak from the inside pocket of his jacket.
For a moment he simply stood there, looking all about him. It had been
hard, even with the filters, being out there in the open daylight. Despite
the drugs, some part of him had ached for the closeness, the darkness of
his ship's warrens, the feel of other bodies crawling over his. As he
began to unfold the cloak, Ka-Ta smiled, recalling his race's past.
U-mans, they called themselves. Distant ancestors of the people who had