"Robert F. Young - The Star Eel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

"Yes. I deganglioned thirty-two of them. Blew up their brains. I got even."
"If you hate them so much, why should you care what happens to this one?"
"I don't hate them any more. When I looked at the thirty-second one, I saw a face in it тАФ you know,
the way people on Earth see a face in the moon. The face I saw was mine."
"And then you quit killing them."
Starfinder nods. "I got a job as a converter in the orbital shipyards of Altair IV. I discovered that this
whale was still alive and that it could communicate. It had two ganglia before it was Jonahed, only one of
which had been destroyed. I told it I would repair the other if it would enter into bondage. It agreed."
"That was cruel."
Starfinder shrugs. "Maybe. But I was a slave like you, sort of. And the whale meant freedom. More
than that, it provided a means of visiting the past. A live whale is a time machine, Ciely. Call Pasha off
and we'll climb aboard and pay a visit to King Arthur's Court. We'll drop in on Tolstoy at Yasnaya
Polyana. We'll watch Armstrong take his first small step on the moon."
Sadly, Ciely shakes her head. "I can't, Starfinder. This is the first time he's fed since I set him free. It
may be ages before he finds another host. He may never find one."
Undaunted, Starfinder mar-shals his forces and moves to a point opposite the enemy's left flank. "I
can understand why you're so fond of him," he says slyly. "He's a most remarkable ship. What I don't
understand is how he could have been converted without first having been degang-lioned."
"I can see you don't know beans about star eels," Ciely says with comic exasperation. "How could
they be deganglioned when they don't have ganglia? Ordinarily all the eelers do when their raise one is
hem it in till it starves to death and then tow it into the yards. Pasha's case was different. The converters
ordered a live eel so they could conduct their 'noble experiment,' and the eelers captured him with
grapnels and towed him in alive. The converters burned their way inside him, got to his psychomotor
nucleus, which is analogous to but by no means the same thing as a whale's ganglion, and attached
'extensors' to the major motor centers. The extensors were then run back to a control panel that had
been installed in the meantime, and hooked up to a series of switches. Then anybody standing at the
console could make Pasha do any-thing they wanted him to just by pressing the right buttons. After I
stole him and we became fast friends, I pulled all the extensors out of the switch boxes. I just couldn't
stand having him enslaved like that. Now he does anything I tell him to."
"But doesn't that amount to the same thing?"
"Of course it doesn't! Because now if he wants to disobey, he can. And I didn't bind him to any
agreement either, the way you did with your whale!"
Starfinder grins. "Touche!" Suddenly an anguished pro-jection appears in his mind тАФ

The figure's inclination from the horizontal is the whale's way of saying that it is weakening fast.
However, Starfinder is not alarmed. Thanks to Ciely, he now knows how the star eel can be dislodged.
He can tell from the look of wonderment on her face that the double hieroglyph registered in her mind
too. "Deactivate all nones-sential systems, whale, he says-pro-jects, more for her benefit than for the
whale's, "and lower interior temperature to .five degrees Cel-sius." Then, so the whale will not think
he intends to abandon it, he adds, "Maintain regular atmo-sphere and standard one-G."
The look of wonderment lingers on Ciely's face after the projection fades. "Is that his way of talking
to you, Starfinder?" she asks.
"Yes. How does Pasha talk to you?"
"He doesn't. He just does what-ever I tell him to."
"Then tell him, please, to re-lease the whale."
"No."
"Then I must make him release it, Ceily."
"You can't. He won't obey anyone but me."
Starfinder stands up. "But I can, Ciely. I know how now."
 The blue eyes widen as she grasps the connotation of "now." Then, quickly, she puts her hand over