JК
Ribofunk :: Филиппо Пол Ди
Страница: 143 из 156However, chaotic factors, pattern seeds, occasionally caused whirlpools-vortices-of lesser or greater dimensions to butterfly into existence. These were dealt with by the various species of vortifishes, large, powerful, wide-mouthed organisms who derived their sustenance from gobbling the rogue silicrobes (and only the rogues), destroying the vortices in the process.
It took skill and luck and courage for the Hyenas to ride their small boats to the very edge of the vortices and spear their prey, but the cynocephali managed quite superbly-as they had been engineered to do.
Retreating through layers of shimmerstat windows, Dos Santos focused on the village of podhuts. The bank was thronged with welcoming Hyenas, hunters brandishing their spears, mothers carrying up to four nursing babies in special slings.
Suddenly, the villagers began to scream and gesture, expressions of fear on their faces.
The Hyena throttled down until they stood still. Dos Santos turned to look out to midRiver.
A huge vortice was forming.
"Peej, this is impossible. Silicrobes do not come online by themselves-"
Dos Santos loosened his splatpistol in its holster. "It's happening, though."
Something, some form, was beginning to rise up out of the vortice. 'Fishes nibbled at its base without effect.
Matte black, the figure was plainly formed out of silicrobes. But the 'crobes were agglomerating in ways they had never been designed to. Flowing, shifting, rearing up-
ward in a column thrice the mass of a man, they obviously sought to express some programmed form.
At last they succeeded.
An ebony Neptune towered out of the River. Seaweed hair, serene eidolon face, clamshell beard, massive arms and chest, fish tail below the waist.
The River had materialized its monotone god.
"It's an autocatalytic set," whispered a horrified Dos Santos.
He had heard of such things arising, back when the Rivers had been in their prototype stage. Feedback among rogue components bootstrapped primitive, self replicating A-life out of the isotropic soup.
But this was different. This was planned by the Walton League, their ace in the hole, something vastly more dangerous.
Dos Santos squirted off an alert to Isoke as he raised his pistol and rattled off a full clip.
The intelligent bullets, loaded with instantaneous lysing agents, found their mark, but without apparent effect. Dos Santos had known that the lysing agents wouldn't work against nonprotein A-life, but he had been hoping the bullets would disrupt the thing's coherence.
It took skill and luck and courage for the Hyenas to ride their small boats to the very edge of the vortices and spear their prey, but the cynocephali managed quite superbly-as they had been engineered to do.
Retreating through layers of shimmerstat windows, Dos Santos focused on the village of podhuts. The bank was thronged with welcoming Hyenas, hunters brandishing their spears, mothers carrying up to four nursing babies in special slings.
Suddenly, the villagers began to scream and gesture, expressions of fear on their faces.
The Hyena throttled down until they stood still. Dos Santos turned to look out to midRiver.
A huge vortice was forming.
"Peej, this is impossible. Silicrobes do not come online by themselves-"
Dos Santos loosened his splatpistol in its holster. "It's happening, though."
Something, some form, was beginning to rise up out of the vortice. 'Fishes nibbled at its base without effect.
Matte black, the figure was plainly formed out of silicrobes. But the 'crobes were agglomerating in ways they had never been designed to. Flowing, shifting, rearing up-
ward in a column thrice the mass of a man, they obviously sought to express some programmed form.
At last they succeeded.
An ebony Neptune towered out of the River. Seaweed hair, serene eidolon face, clamshell beard, massive arms and chest, fish tail below the waist.
The River had materialized its monotone god.
"It's an autocatalytic set," whispered a horrified Dos Santos.
He had heard of such things arising, back when the Rivers had been in their prototype stage. Feedback among rogue components bootstrapped primitive, self replicating A-life out of the isotropic soup.
But this was different. This was planned by the Walton League, their ace in the hole, something vastly more dangerous.
Dos Santos squirted off an alert to Isoke as he raised his pistol and rattled off a full clip.
The intelligent bullets, loaded with instantaneous lysing agents, found their mark, but without apparent effect. Dos Santos had known that the lysing agents wouldn't work against nonprotein A-life, but he had been hoping the bullets would disrupt the thing's coherence.