• Пожаловаться

Ian Watson: The Embedding

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Ian Watson: The Embedding» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию). В некоторых случаях присутствует краткое содержание. категория: Фантастика и фэнтези / на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале. Библиотека «Либ Кат» — LibCat.ru создана для любителей полистать хорошую книжку и предлагает широкий выбор жанров:

любовные романы фантастика и фэнтези приключения детективы и триллеры эротика документальные научные юмористические анекдоты о бизнесе проза детские сказки о религиии новинки православные старинные про компьютеры программирование на английском домоводство поэзия

Выбрав категорию по душе Вы сможете найти действительно стоящие книги и насладиться погружением в мир воображения, прочувствовать переживания героев или узнать для себя что-то новое, совершить внутреннее открытие. Подробная информация для ознакомления по текущему запросу представлена ниже:

Ian Watson The Embedding

The Embedding: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «The Embedding»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

The Embedding

Ian Watson: другие книги автора


Кто написал The Embedding? Узнайте фамилию, как зовут автора книги и список всех его произведений по сериям.

The Embedding — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «The Embedding», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Yet he found it intensely healthy to look in on them. A kind of therapy. Already, his dark sense of alienation had largely lifted.

Sole’s wasn’t the only world hidden away beneath Haddon Unit. There were two other worlds with their children in them—the Logic World run by Dorothy Summers and Rosson; and the ‘Alien’ World invented by Jannis the psychologist.

The life support systems for the three worlds were automated as well as the speech programmes. There’d be less and less reason to go down there in person as the kids grew older and more capable of managing. It might even be less and less desirable. The Gods will have to ration their appearances, joked Sam Bax, Director of Haddon.

Competent, bouncy Sam Bax, thought Sole. Leave him to handle politics. The money-getting, the Institutes and Foundations, the military tie-up, the security. It’s none of my business. Let Pierre bother himself about the politics of Brazil. Don’t pull me into it. Just let me get on with my bloody work! The children of my mind are here, my Rama, my brave Vidya, my beloved Gulshen, my darling Vasilki. Don’t make the Gods withdraw from the scene too soon, Sam.

On the screen, Vidya opened his eyes and stared at the shapes of Sole and Rosson. Giant lips moved silently, fleshy and foot-long—and spoke bad language at him.

By night, as the children slept, their speech would be reinforced by the whispering of feathermikes, by the hypnothrob of sleepteaching.


In the canteen at lunchtime, another vicious bitchy brush with Dorothy.

Sole sat at the same table with her, chewed a piece of gristly stew and thought how indigestible Dorothy was herself, emotionally. She betrayed little of Sole’s dangerous love for his children. Fortunate for her charges that her partner in the enterprise, Rosson, was the warm human being he was.

“Dorothy, do you ever worry about when the kids grow up?” Sole blurted out rashly. “What’s going to happen to them for the next forty or fifty years?”

She pursed her lips.

“Their sex drive can be controlled, I suppose—”

“I don’t mean sex, I mean what about them as people. What’s going to happen? We don’t ask that question, do we?”

“Need we ask it? I’m sure there’ll be space for them.”

“But what sort of space? Outer Space? Space in a thermos bottle tossed in the cosmic sea in the direction of the nearest star? A crew for a starship?”

Dorothy Summers didn’t seem to encounter any gristle or else swallowed what she did.

“I told Sam it was a mistake appointing married people,” she said tartly. “I don’t imagine your having a child of your own helps objectivity.”

Sole thought instinctively of Vidya—before he remembered that ‘his’ child was called Peter…

“Do you have any idea how large the world’s population is?” she demanded. “I mean, can you visualize it? All the children that are going to be born before today’s over-or wiped out before tonight by accident! Do you think it matters one scrap that a dozen boys and girls are brought up-lavishly, I might add-in somewhat unusual circumstances? Don’t come whining to me, my friend, if you get cold feet on a winter’s morning.”

Sole smiled uncomfortably.

“Can you visualize what the fate of these brats might have been had they not come here? Haddon is Aladdin’s Cave so far as they’re concerned. Instead of the rubbish heap!”

“Aladdin’s Cave? May they discover the Open Sesame for us poor mortals then—”

“Indeed, Chris, yes in-deed. I’ll tell you one thing—if they don’t find it for us, then somebody else will. The Russians have some pretty queer things going on in their mental hospitals-besides using them to keep their intellectuals locked up!”

“What awful stew this is,” said Sole, hoping to escape from her clutches; but she pinned him tight as a piece of meat on her fork, for she’d seen Sam Bax heading their way with his own plate of stew. Dorothy blandly reported the conversation to him as soon as he sat down.

Sam nodded sympathetically.

“Have you heard the story about the American spinster and her Venus Fly Trap, Chris?’

And Sam proceeded to tell a sick-funny story that deftly put Dorothy down as the spinster she was and Sole as the sentimentalist. The situation was glossed over-apparently Sam wanted his staff to be on the best of terms today.

“This woman lived in a New York skyscraper where they wouldn’t let her keep any pets, not even a goldfish,” Sam explained in a jolly, steamrolling manner, between forkfuls of stew. “So she bought a plant to keep her company. A Venus Fly Trap. The Fly Trap can count up to two so it can obviously think after a fashion—”

“A plant can count?” sniffed Dorothy suspiciously.

“Truly! One tap on the tripwire of this botanic gin-trap-say a grain of sand falls on it-and there’s no reaction. But give two taps, like a fly would when it lands and stamps its feet-and the jaws snap shut. That’s genuine counting-thinking, of a sort. Well, this woman’s apartment was so clean and airconditioned and high above the city streets, there weren’t any flies ever-so she had to feed it cat food to keep it happy. This went on for two years till one day she found a fly in the kitchen. She thought she’d give her Trap a treat so she caught the fly and fed it to it. Trap closed. Trap digested the fly. A few hours after that the Trap died of food poisoning. Live prey! It died of reality!”

“Or of DDT,” sniffed Dorothy.

“Of the perils of a controlled environment, I prefer to think! There’s a moral in that for us. Any danger the kids face isn’t concerned with their being in those three worlds down below-but in being brought out of them.”

Sam forked up the rest of his stew then sat back surveying Sole and Dorothy Summers amiably.

“More important than this little argument between you two people, however, is-tomorrow.” He wiped his mouth with the paper napkin, screwed it into a ball and dropped it neatly in the centre of his plate. “We’re receiving a visit from one of our American colleagues, which I gather the powers-that-be consider rather important.”

He fished in his pocket.

“I’ve got a working paper this man’s written on your subject, Chris. Would you glance through it before then?”

Sam passed the xeroxed sheets over.

Thomas R. Zwingler: A Computer Analysis of Latent Verbal Disorientation in Long-Flight Astronauts. Part One: Distortion of Conceptual Sets.

Dorothy craned her neck to read the title too.

“My God,” she sniffed. “The pomposity of it.”

Sam shook his head.

“I don’t think you’ll find Tom Zwingler so pompous in person.”

“Where did you meet him?” Sole asked.

“A seminar in the States last year,” Sam answered vaguely. “Tom Zwingler’s a floater-attached to a number of agencies. Sort of experiment co-ordinator.”

“What agencies?” Sole pressed, annoyed at his own recent display of vulnerability. “Rand? Hudson? NASA?”

“I gather he’s on the salary roll of the National Security Agency. Communications Division.”

“You mean espionage?” Dorothy raised an eyebrow sarcastically.

“Hardly that, judging from this paper, Dorothy. A communications man.”

“A halfway house man,” smiled Dorothy. “Like our Chris?”

Sam frowned. He rose bulkily from his seat.

Читать дальше

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «The Embedding»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «The Embedding» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё не прочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «The Embedding»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «The Embedding» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.