"Anderson, Poul - Stars Are Also Fire, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

When you were down in the dark?
Why speak you not of that hollow realm
Where the puzzled, quiet shades
Half-dreaming drift through starlessness
And you were their captive queen,
Now when we welcome you back to earth
For as long as you may abide?
The nieadows blossom beneath your feet,
The world is awash with light,
But the springtime grass has roots thafreach
To trouble the bones below.
Is this why you walk among us mute,
Is this the gift of your love,
To save us from knowing what you have known,
Until you descend again?
ЧSalerianus,
Quaestiones, II, i, 1-16
Long afterward, there came to Alpha Centauri the news of what had happened on Earth and around Sol. How that news came, breaking the silence that had been laid upon it, is another story. At the time, few dwellers on Demeter gave it much heed, disturbing though it was. They were in the course of departure from the world their forebears had made home, for in less than a hundred years it must perish. However, one among them was a philosopher.
His young son found him deep in thought and asked why. Because he would not lie to a child, he explained that word lately received from the Mother Star troubled him. "But don't be afraid," he added. "This is nothing that will touch us for a very long while, if it ever does."
"What is it?" inquired the boy.
"I'm sorry, I can't quite tell you," said the philosopher. "Not because it's a secret any longer, but because it goes too far back," and because ultimately it was too subtle.
"Can't you tell me anyway?" urged his son.
With an effort, the father put disquiet aside. Truly, four and a third light-years distant, they need have no immediate fears about the matter, or so he supposed. He smiled. "First you must know some history, and you have barely begun to study that."
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"It jumbles together in my head," the boy complained.
"Yes, a big load for a small head to take in," the philosopher agreed. He reached a decision. His child wanted to be with him. Furthermore, if he took this chance to describe certain key factors, a realization of their importance might dawn for the poy, and that might someday make a difference. "Well, sit down beside me and we'll talk," he invited. "We'll look at the beginnings of what you're wondering about. Would you like that?
"We could start anywhere and anywhen. Creatures not yet human, taming fire. The first machines, the first scientists, the early explorersЧor spaceships, genetics, cybernetics, nanotechnologyЧBut we'll start with Anson Guthrie."
The boy's eyes widened.
"Always remember, he was just another man," the philosopher said. "Never imagine him as anything else. He'd hate that. You see, he loves freedom, and freedom means having no masters except our own consciences and common sense.
"He did do more than most of us. You remember how it was his Fireball Enterprises that opened up space for everybody. Many governments didn't like having a private company that powerful, nearly a nation itself. But he didn't interfere much with them; he didn't want their sort of power. It was enough that his followers were loyal to him and he to them.
"This might have changed after he died. Luckily, before then he'd been downloaded. The pattern of his mind, memories, style of thinking, were mapped into a neural network. And so his personality went on, in machine bodies, as the chief of Fireball."
"Aw, it's not like that," the boy protested.
"I'm sorry," his father apologized. "Often I'm vague about how much of your education you've quite grasped, as young as you are. You're right, the truth is endlessly more complicated. I don't pretend to
THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE 3
know everything about it. I don't believe anybody does.
"But let's go on. Of course you have learned how the Lunarians came to be. Human genes needed changing, if human beings were to live, really live and have children, on Earth's Moon. What you may not have heard much about is the other metamorphs, the other life forms that got changed too, many different new kinds of plants and animals and even people. You may not have heard anything about the Keiki Moana."
The boy frowned, searching memory. "TheyЧthey helped Anson Guthrie onceЧthey swam?"
"Yes. Intelligent seals," his father said. The boy had encountered full-sensory recordings of the ordinary species. "They lived with a few humans like dear friends, or more than friends." The philosopher paused. "But I'm getting ahead of myself. That community wasn't founded until after the exodus."
"What's that?"
"Oh, you haven't met the word? Doubtless it is rather archaic. In this case, 'exodus' means when Guthrie led our ancestors to Demeter."
The boy nodded eagerly. "An* the anЧancestors of the Lunarians who live in our asteroids. They all had logo."
"Not strictly true. Probably they could have stayed. But they wouldn't have been happy, the way everything was changing and Fireball itself soon to be no more."
"Because of the machines?"
"No, that isn't right either. Drfn't forget, people have had machines of one kind or another for ages. They made the machines better and better, till at last they began to build robots, which can be programmed to do things without a person in control. And then finally they built sophotects, machines that can think and know that they think, like you and me."
Now the boy's voice took on the least tinge of fear.
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"But the so-pho-tects, they made themselves better yet, didn't they?"
His father put an arm around his shoulders. "Don't be afraid. They have no wish to harm us. Besides, they're far away at Sol. Yes, Earth has come to depend on the cybercosm, all those wonderful machines working and . . . thinking. . . together. That's made Earth very different from what we have hereЧ"
The philosopher stopped, knowing how readily dim fears arise in children and grow until they leap forth as nightmares. Already he had softened his utterances. He did not know what the cybercosm portended for humankind. Nobody did, maybe not even itself. Let him set the little heart beside him at rest, as well as he could.
"But it's still Earth, the Earth you've been told about," he said. "The countries are still all in the World Federation, and the Peace Authority keeps them peaceful, and no one has to be hungry or fall sick or go in fear." He wondered how much softening was in that sentence, for indeed he spoke of a world so distant that np ship had borne any of his kind across the space between since Guthrie spent the whole wealth of Fireball to bring a handful of colonists here. Communication with it had virtually ceased. "And we are just as different, in our own ways, from what Earth once was," he finished.