"Gene Wolfe - Talk of Mandrakes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

"Is it safe to touch?" Peak asked.

"Perfectly."

While the wall slid down behind him, he knelt before the blue-gray heap. It
was pocked with pores a millimeter or two in diameter; its surface felt like a dry
sponge. He said, "I suppose it must conserve water at this stage."

Selim's voice came from a speaker in the ceiling. "Exactly. It has lost its root
structure and is entirely dependent on the water, carbon, and nitrogen stored in what
was once its stem. Now it must hope for a visit from some mobile creature if it is
ever to become mobile itself."

Peak turned to stare at him through the temperglass. "There's a mobile form?"

"Yes, for the dissemination of seed. Even Earth has them, as you surely
know. Tumbleweeds, to give one example of many, discard their roots and roll as
they are driven by the wind, dropping seeds as they go. The remarkable thing about
this--what shall we call it?"

"Selimus, of course," Peak said.

"In all humility, there will be more than one creature that will bear my name.
Selimus dryas, perhaps. At any rate, the remarkable thing about this dryad is that it
has no fixed mobile form. It imitates, at least to a degree, the form of the first mobile
life of sufficient size to approach it. Touch it again where you touched it before."
 Peak did as he was told, and felt human skin. The pores had shrunk, and there
were whorls in the skin, like fingerprints.

"As it imitates you more exactly, it perceives you better. Look for the eyes.
They should be appearing near the top about now."

They were brown, too close-set for human eyes, and nearly concealed by their
single eyelid. As Peak watched, fascinated, they moved until there was five
centimeters of rough brownish skin between them. The flap split, grew lashes of fine,
black hair.

"You see, by imitating the mobile form before her, the dryad not only
becomes mobile herself, but insures herself from harm. Very few animals attack their
own kind. We are one, but the dryad has no way of knowing it, no doubt
fortunately."

Filled with wonder, Peak shook his head. "It's intelligent?"

"Not at all. Yet it will leave you in doubt about that for a long, long time. It
senses your approval or disapproval, you see, and shapes its course accordingly."

A hand--nearly formless, like a rubber glove painted with nails and
knuckles--lifted from the place Peak had touched, growing faster than any
mushroom. "The mandrake," he whispered. "The mandrake's come at last. Or come