"06 - Children of the Mind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

Where was the pilot? There must be a pilot, for the young man who sat
across the room from her, murmuring to his computer, could hardly be
controlling a starship capable of the feat of traveling faster than light.

And yet that must have been precisely what he was doing, for there were no
other doors that might lead to other rooms. The starship had looked small
from the outside; this room obviously used all the space that it contained.
There in the corner were the batteries that stored energy from the solar
collectors on the top of the ship. In that chest, which seemed to be
insulated like a refrigerator, there might be food and drink. So much for
life support. Where was the romance in starflight now, if this was all it
took? A mere room.

With nothing else to watch, she watched the young man at the computer
terminal. Peter Wiggin, he said his name was. The name of the ancient
Hegemon, the one who first united all the human race under his control,
back when people lived on only one world, all the nations and races and
religions and philosophies crushed together elbow to elbow, with nowhere to
go but into each other's lands, for the sky was a ceiling then, and space
was a vast chasm that could not be bridged. Peter Wiggin, the man who ruled
the human race. This was not him, of course, and he had admitted as much.
Andrew Wiggin sent him; Wang-mu remembered, from things that Master Han had
told her, that Andrew Wiggin had somehow made him. Did this make the great
Speaker of the Dead Peter's father? Or was he somehow Ender's brother, not
just named for but actually embodying the Hegemon who had died three
thousand years before?

Peter stopped murmuring, leaned back in his chair, and sighed. He rubbed
his eyes, then stretched and groaned. It was a very indelicate thing to do
in company. The sort of thing one might expect from a coarse fieldworker.

He seemed to sense her disapproval. Or perhaps he had forgotten her and now
suddenly remembered that he had company. Without straightening himself in
his chair, he turned his head and looked at her.

"Sorry," he said. "I forgot I was not alone."

Wang-mu longed to speak boldly to him, despite a lifetime retreating from
bold speech. After all, he had spoken to her with offensive boldness, when
his starship appeared like a fresh-sprouted mushroom on the lawn by the
river and he emerged with a single vial of a disease that would cure her
home world, Path, of its genetic illness. He had looked her in the eye not
fifteen minutes ago and said, "Come with me and you'll be part of changing
history. Making history." And despite her fear, she had said yes.

Had said yes, and now sat in a swivel chair watching him behave crudely,
stretching like a tiger in front of her. Was that his beast-of-the-heart,
the tiger? Wang-mu had read the Hegemon. She could believe that there was a
tiger in that great and terrible man. But this one? This boy? Older than
Wang-mu, but she was not too young to know immaturity when she saw it. He