《A Teardrop Falls 》作者：- Larry Niven【EPUB】

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A Teardrop Falls Larry Niven Produced by calibre 0.6.40 A TEARDROP FALLS Two miles up the thick air of Harvest thinned to Earth-normal pressure. The sky was a peculiarblue but blue. It was unbreathable still but there was oxygen ten percent and growing. Oneof the biological factories showed against white cloudscape to nice effect in view of afloating camera. The camera showed a tremendous rippling balloon in the shape of an invertedteardrop blowing green bubbles from its tip. Hilary Gage watched the view with a sense ofpride. Not that he would want to visit Harvest ever. Multicolored slimes infected shallow tidal poolsnear the poles. Green sticky stuff floated in the primordial atmosphere. If it drifted too lowit burned to ash. The planet was slimy. Changes were exceedingly slow. Mistakes took years todemonstrate themselves and decades to eradicate. Hilary Gage preferred the outer moon. One day this planet would be a work. Even then Hilary Gage would not join the colonists.Hilary Gage was a computer program. Gage would never have volunteered for the Harvest Project unless the alternative was death. Death by old age. He was aware rumor-fashion that other worlds were leery of advanced computers. They were toomuch like the berserker machines. But the tens of thousands of human worlds varied enormouslyamong themselves and there were places the berserkers had never reached. The exterminationmachines had been mere rumor in the Channith region since before Channith was settled. Nobodyreally doubted their existence but . But for some purposes computers were indecently convenient and some projects requiredartificial intelligence. The computer wasnt really an escape. Hilary Gage must have died years ago. Perhaps his lastthoughts had been of an immortal computer program. The computer was not a new one. Its programming had included two previous personalities . . .who had eventually changed their minds and asked that they be erased. Gage could understand that. Entertainments were in his files. When he reached for them theywere there beginning to end like vivid memories. Chess games could survive that and somepoetry but what of a detective novel A football game A livey Gage made his own entertainment. He had not summoned up his poem for these past ten days. He was surprised and pleased at hisself-control. Perhaps now he could study it with fresh eyes . . . Wrong. The entire work blinked into his mind in an instant. It was as if he had finishedreading