"David Brin - Uplift Storm 1 - Brightness Reef v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

If only . . .
Her thought broke against an interruption. Suddenly, high overhead, a boy stuck his head through a slit window. Hanging upside down, he cried--"No fires!"
He was joined by others, at different openings, all shouting the same thing. Chimps joined in, shrieking excitement across the crowded meeting hall.
"No fires--and the roof-of-stone still stands!"
Old Henrik stood, then spoke two words to the elders before departing with his son. Amid the flustered babble of the throng, Sara read the exploser's expression of resolve and the decisive message of his lips.
"We wait."

Asx
OUR CARAVAN OF RACES MARCHED TOWARD where the alien ship was last seen-a blazing cylinder-descending beyond a low hill. Along the way, Vubben continued chanting from the Scroll of Danger. Voices cried out ahead. Crowds jostled along a ridgetop, hissing and murmuring. We must nudge past men and hoon to win our way through. Whereupon, did we not gaze across a nest? A new clearing lined with shattered trees, still smoking from whatever ray had cut them down.
And poised amid this devastation-shimmering from its heat of entry-lay the cause.
Nearby, human and urrish crafters argued in the strange dialect of the engineering caste, disputing whether this nub or that blister might be weaponry or sensors. But which of us on Jijo has the expertise to guess? Our ships long ago went down to join this planet's melting crust. Even the most recent arrivals, humans, are many generations removed from starfarers. No living member of the Commons ever saw anything like this.
It was a ship of the Civilization of the Five Galaxies. That much the techies could tell.
Yet where was the rayed spiral? The symbol required to be carried on the forward flank of every sanctioned ship of space?
Our worried lore-masters explain-the spiral is no mere symbol. Silently, it rides. Impartially, it records. Objectively, it bears witness to everything seen and done, wherever the vessel may fly.
We peered and sought, but in the ordained place there lay only a burnished shine. It had been rubbed away, smoother than a qheuenish larva.
That was when confusion gave way to understanding. Realization of what this ship represented.
Not the great Institutes, as we first thought.
Nor the righteous, mighty, legalistic star-clans-or the mysterious Zang.
Not even exiles like ourselves.
None of those, but outlaws. Felons of an order worse than our own ancestors.
Villains.
Villains had come to Jijo.


III. THE BOOK OF THE SEA

It is a Paradox of Life that all species breed
past mere replacement.
Any paradise of plenty soon fills, to become
paradise no more.
By what right, then, do we exiles claim a
world that was honorably set aside,
to nurture frail young-life in peace,
and be kept safe from hungry nations?

Exiles, you should fear the law's just wrath,
to find you here, unsanctioned, not yet
redeemed.
But when judgment comes, law will also be
your shield, tempering
righteous wrath with justice.

There is a deeper terror, prowling the angry
sky.
It is a different peril. One that stalks in
utter absence of the law.

-- The Scroll of Danger