"Butler, Octavia - Xenogenesis 01 - Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Butler Octavia E)

His own tentacles swept toward her in a way she still found disconcerting, though it was only his way of giving her his attention or signaling her that she had it.
"I'm willing to learn what you have to teach me," she said, "but I don't think I'm the right teacher for others. There were so many humans who already knew how to live in the wilderness-so many who could probably teach you a little more. Those are the ones you ought to be talking to."
"We have talked to them. They will have to be especially careful because some of the things they 'know' aren't true anymore. There are new plants-mutations of old ones and additions we've made. Some things that used to be edible are lethal now. Some things are deadly only if they aren't prepared properly. Some of the animal life isn't as harmless as it apparently once was. Your Earth is still your Earth, but between the efforts of your people to destroy it and ours to restore it, it has changed."
She nodded, wondering why she could absorb his words so easily. Perhaps because she had known even before her capture that the world she had known was dead. She had already absorbed that loss to the degree that she could.
"There must be ruins," she said softly.
"There were. We've destroyed many of them."
She seized his arm without thinking. "You destroyed them? There were things left and you destroyed them?"
"You'll begin again. We'll put you in areas that are clean of radioactivity and history. You will become something other than you were."
"And you think destroying what was left of our cultures will make us better?"
"No. Only different." She realized suddenly that she was facing him, grasping his arm in a grip that should have been painful to him. It was painful to her. She let go of him and his arm swung to his side in the oddly dead way in which his limbs seemed to move when he was not using them for a specific purpose.
"You were wrong," she said. She could not sustain her anger. She could not look at his tentacled, alien face and sustain anger-but she had to say the words. "You destroyed what wasn't yours," she said. "You completed an insane act."
"You are still alive," be said.
She walked beside him, silently ungrateful. Knee-high tufts of thick, fleshy leaves or tentacles grew from the soil. He stepped carefully to avoid them-which made her want to kick them. Only the fact that her feet were bare stopped her. Then she saw, to her disgust, that the leaves twisted or contracted out of the way if she stepped near one-like plants made up of snake-sized night crawlers. They seemed to be rooted to the ground. Did that make them plants?
"What are those things?" she asked, gesturing toward one with a foot.
"Part of the ship. They can be induced to produce a liquid we and our animals enjoy. It wouldn't be good for you."
"Are they plant or animal?"
"They aren't separate from the ship."
"Well, is the ship plant or animal?"
"Both, and more."
Whatever that meant. "Is it intelligent?"
"It can be. That part of it is dormant now. But even so, the ship can be chemically induced to perform more functions than you would have the patience to listen to. it does a great deal on its own without monitoring. And it. . ." He fell silent for a moment, his tentacles smooth against his body. Then he continued, "The human doctor used to say it loved us. There is an affinity, but it's biological-a strong, symbiotic relationship. We serve the ship's needs and it serves ours. It would die without us and we would be planetbound without it. For us, that would eventually mean death."
"Where did you get it?"
"We grew it."
"You. . . or your ancestors?"
"My ancestors grew this one. I'm helping to grow another."
"Now? Why?"
"We'll divide here. We're like mature asexual animals in that way, but we divide into three: Dinso to stay on Earth until it is ready to leave generations from now; Toaht to leave in this ship; and Akjai to leave in the new ship."
Lilith looked at him. "Some of you will go to Earth with us?"
"I will, and my family and others. All Dinso."
"Why?"
"This is how we grow-how we've always grown. We'll take the knowledge of shipgrowing with us so that our descendants will be able to leave when the time comes. We couldn't survive as a people if we were always confined to one ship or one world."
"Will you take. . . seeds or something?"
"We'll take the necessary materials."
"And those who leave-Toaht and Akjai-you'll never see them again?"
"I won't. At some time in the distant future, a group of my descendants might meet a group of theirs. I hope that will happen. Both will have divided many times. They'll have acquired much to give one another."
"They probably won't even know one another. They'll remember this division as mythology if they remember it at all."
"No, they'll recognize one another. Memory of a division is passed on biologically. I remember every one that has taken place in my family since we left the homeworld."
"Do you remember your homeworld itself? I mean, could you get back to it if you wanted to?"
"Go back?" His tentacles smoothed again. "No, Lilith, that's the one direction that's closed to us. This is our homeworld now." He gestured around them from what seemed to be a glowing ivory sky to what seemed to be brown soil.
There were many more of the huge trees around them now, and she could see people going in and out of the trunks-naked, gray Oankali, tentacled all over, some with two arms, some, alarmingly, with four, but none with anything she recognized as sexual organs. Perhaps some of the tentacles and extra arms served a sexual function.
She examined every cluster of Oankali for humans, but saw none. At least none of the Oankali came near her or seemed to pay any attention to her. Some of them, she noticed with a shudder, had tentacles covering every inch of their heads all around. Others had tentacles in odd, irregular patches. None had quite Jdahya's humanlike arrangement- tentacles placed to resemble eyes, ears, hair. Had Jdahya's work with humans been suggested by the chance arrangement of his head tentacles or had he been altered surgically or in some other way to make him seem more human?
"This is the way I have always looked," he said when she asked, and he would not say any more on the subject.
Minutes later they passed near a tree and she reached out to touch its smooth, slightly giving bark-like the walls of her isolation room, but darker-colored. "These trees are all buildings, aren't they?" she asked.
"These structures are not trees," he told her. "They're part of the ship. They support its shape, provide necessities for us-food, oxygen, waste disposal, transport conduits, storage and living space, work areas, many things."
They passed very near a pair of Oankali who stood so close together their head tentacles writhed and tangled together. She could see their bodies in clear detail. Like the others she had seen, these were naked. Jdahya had probably worn clothing only as a courtesy to her. For that she was grateful.
The growing number of people they passed near began to disturb her, and she caught herself drawing closer to Jdahya as though for protection. Surprised and embarrassed, she made herself move away from him. He apparently noticed.
"Lilith?" he said very quietly.
''What?"
Silence.
"I'm all right," she said. "It's just. . . so many people, and so strange to me."