Ribofunk   ::   Филиппо Пол Ди

A rush of small dislodged pebbles tumbled down to the River surface and sat atop the high-density gel-like silicrobe liquid, each rock centered in its own surface-tension dimple.

The kibe sounded alarmed. "Peej Dos Santos, you do not intend-"

Dos Santos reached the marge of the River and squatted down. The pebbles were drifting downstream.

"Quiet! If you want to be useful, prepare to analyze some telemetry."

After peeling off both gloves, the River Master inserted his hands into the stagnant silicrobe soup.

The shimmerstats boiled with metagrafix in the corners of his eyes, fed by the subdermal mycotronix digiface sensors in his fingertips. Tapping the feed, the kibe added its verbal interpretation.

"It appears that the River has been contaminated with a dose of high-velocity instruction ribozymes based on the standard stepdown routines, but with subtle alterations that are not readily decodeable. The silicrobes are merely offline and apparently undamaged. If we could denature the invader, it would be a simple matter to restart the River-"

Dos Santos stood. "We'll have to do it fast, though, and that means getting to the facilities at Machine Lake. Not only do we have to worry about the possibility of further attacks, but there are system constraints as well. Eventually, the 'crobes are going to drop out of suspension and settle to the bottom. A restart under those conditions would be chaotic. We'd kick up enough particulates to clog the whole delt a a nd probably kill off all the lifeforms as well. And if the mixing of upriver and downRiver 'crobes continues, the vortices that'll form on a reboot will be orders of magnitude larger than normal-"

The kibe interrupted. "Speaking of vortices, Peej, here comes a Vortifish Hunter right now!"

4. Old Man River



The coracle glittered nacreously, catching glints of African sunlight, an upturned halfshell with rippled, purpled rim. (Its original seedstock, highly modified of course, had been the chambered nautilus.) Large enough to hold two basal humans, it now contained only one sophont, a cynocephali wearing a loin covering of plaid clothtree fabric.

Originally the cynocephali-or Anubians-had been bred and released only along River Twenty-Nine, the old Nile. Part tourist attraction, these bipedal dog headed sophonts had been designed to occupy a new top niche in the food chain. So successful and popular had they proven that no River today, some ten Anubian generations later, was without them.