Jack Williamson - Manseed

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2024-12-02 0 0 554.77KB 122 页 5.9玖币
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Manseed
Jack Williamson
1982
Customer Reviews
Can man plan beyond his own lifetime?, May 8, 1999
Reviewer
:
A great book to show that man can plan to keep the race going. A fantastic story of the future of
man while showing the limitations. --
Contents
One - The Defender
Two - Attack Command
Three - Murdered World
Four - Genetic Malfunction
Five - Human Harvest
Six - Lethal Agent
About The Author
One - The Defender
In the nightmare, he had no body. Frightened, he drifted forever in the empty dark, hunted by
things that had no shape, that made no sound, that had no minds except their monstrous hunger
for him. He tried to get away, but he had no limbs, no will, no clue to anything.
The alarm crashed.
He woke alone, chilled with sweat and shivering, clutching for Jayna until he remembered she
was gone. Lying alone in the dreadfully empty bed, he tried to understand the dream. It must
have come from the way he felt without her - desolate, helpless, still bewildered.
Trying not to hate her, he saw her in his mind. Nude and bitchily seductive, flashing down a
white coral beach toward whiter surf, Crowler panting after her.
Groggily, he throttled the alarm and groped for things not so painful. His lecture at ten. The
curriculum committee. The senior seminar. His pending research grant for the multilayer
micromemory and the call to La Jolla to look at Tomislav's Biowand software.
A hunger pang, but he ate no breakfast now. Not since she left. Dressing, missing even her
wry disapproval of his clashing shirt and necktie, he snapped on the morning news. Famine, riot,
terror - the world had matched his savage mood, and there was no cheer anywhere.
He cut off the TV. Walking to the Kingsmill campus, he tried to savor springtime. Trees in
leaf, a flower scent from somewhere, long-legged coeds blooming out of jeans and sneakers. A
songbird mocked him, and he yearned for her. Since she had left, all the world was empty.
The phone was ringing when he reached his office door. "Martin Rablon?" His heart paused
because the cool music of her voice could have been Jayna's. "The computer scientist?"
"I teach computer science."
"I'm Megan Drake. With the Raven Foundation. We need advice on a new direction in
computers." Jayna had never even tried to understand them. "Professor, are you available for a
consultation?"
"Sure." Another new escape, and he felt grateful for it. "After commencement - "
That black, never-ending nightmare chasm.
He sank into it, sank forever.
Who am I? Wordless urges ached and burst inside him. What place is this?
All he knew was darkness, stillness, bottomless infinity. That and a dull discomfort throbbing
in his head. A tingling deadness in his fingers, in his face and his feet. Still he sank - or was he
really somehow floating? Searching, he found no sense of motion or support, no clue to time or
place, no glint of light, no hint of anything beyond that prickling pressure that wasn't quite even a
pain.
It pressed and pressed, swelling inside him, heavy everywhere, until he thought he couldn't
endure it. Yet when he tried to struggle, every effort seemed to close it tighter, its gray chill
aching always deeper. He found no way to end it.
Still he sank or maybe floated through that soundless, stifling dark, touching nothing, all his
body frozen - if he really had a body - without breath or even need for breath. That itself became
a haunting riddle.
How was he alive?
The blunt throb beat, beat, beat, until he was glad to let it hammer him back into the vacant
dark.
He sat with a margarita by the pool, his bad leg propped on another chair. Spray chilled his
face when the fat man dived, and a sun glint stabbed his eyes. Turning to shield them, he saw the
girl striding behind the sleek-haired manager through the mostly empty tables. They were looking
for him.
"Señor Brink? Mees Drake."
"Megan Drake."
He liked her, even in the dark sunglasses. Vigorous and tall, her hair burnished red under the
sun. She smiled to thank the manager, who had lingered as if for a tip. Waiting for him to go, she
took off the glasses. Her eyes delighted him, greenish gray and very clear.
"You are Don Brink?"
Nodding, waving the manager away, he reached to pull up a chair. With a fleeting glance at
his leg, she sat.
"The - the mercenary soldier?"
"Please - " He had to frown. "If you're media, I don't talk about my work."
"I'm not media." She seemed amused. "In fact, we've learned to be skittish about publicity. I'm
with the Raven Foundation. Down here for a biogenics convention. I happened to hear about you,
and I think we have a job - "
"Afraid you're a little late." With a wry shrug, he moved the leg.
"You've been wounded?" Sudden emotion widened her eyes. "We weren't told."
"A mortar splinter. Still lodged in the knee." Painfully, he grinned. "Dysentery, too, and
recurrent malaria. The medics tell me I've fought my last war."
"Maybe not." She paused to weigh him. "We were told you command unusual fees because
you earn them."
"I tried to. While I could."
"You'll do." A quick smile lit her lean, angular face. "If you want the job."
He shook his head. "In the fix I'm in - "
"No matter." He caught her scent as she leaned closer, something light and clean. Like the
lilacs he remembered blooming in the untended yard around the parsonage in springs when he
was still a child. "Not to us. If you can come to our Albuquerque lab for a consultation - "
She was gone.
Again he was awake, at least half awake, still adrift in that boundless dark. Again he strained
for sound, for any sense of place or time, but all he could find was inside himself. All he knew
was that dull depression throbbing forever in his head and the stinging numbness that gripped
him everywhere. When he fought to move himself, new needles of pain stabbed into his
deadness.
But his fingers flexed!
His toes curled. Stiff wrists began to yield, and stiffer elbows bent. Painfully, he tried to reach
out into the suffocating dark. His unfeeling fingers found something hard and slick and cold that
walled him in, beside and above and even beneath. Something coffin close.
A wave of terror chilled him.
Had he been buried alive?
Not breathing, yet still with no sense of suffocating, was he even alive?
The phone caught him working late at the lab terminal, running Biowand programs to build
and test model virus models, searching for one that might have saved his wife and Roger. Too
late for them, but others might be cured. Absorbed in the dancing patterns of possible life and
annoyed at the call, he let it ring.
It kept on till he gave up.
"What d'you want?"
"Dr. Tomislav?" A girl's voice, soft and clear as Olga's once had been. "The biologist?"
摘要：

ManseedJackWilliamson1982CustomerReviewsCanmanplanbeyondhisownlifetime?,May8,1999Reviewer:Agreatbooktoshowthatmancanplantokeeptheracegoing.Afantasticstoryofthefutureofmanwhileshowingthelimitations.--ContentsOne-TheDefenderTwo-AttackCommandThree-MurderedWorldFour-GeneticMalfunctionFive-HumanHarvestSi...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：122 页 大小：554.77KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-02

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