"Davis, Jerry - Elko the Potter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davis Jerry)

The men and women carried their harvest in by hand in large
baskets. There was not a wheel in sight. Wearily, Raymond flipped
the controls forward again. This was taking forever.
For seven long years Raymond had been waiting for this
chance, and now he had only three days to accomplish it. Two of
those three days were already gone, and this last one was rapidly
coming to a close. Behind Raymond there was a long line of others
who waited for their turn at the temporal viewer, each with their
own pet projects. If Raymond didn't make his discovery within the
next few hours, it would probably never happen.
Through the haze of pain he watched it happen again. An
explosion of carts. He reversed the controls again and watched,
scanning slower than ever, trying to trace the progress. It had to
have begun here. Somewhere.
And then --- suddenly! --- he spotted it. He stopped the
temporal scan, freezing the image. Raymond was so elated he
giggled like a madman. "That's it! That's it that's it!" he yelled
out loud. They were beautiful --- the most beautiful thing he'd
ever seen. Four round bricks drying in the hot summer sunlight.
Four bricks that would forever change the history of mankind.

#

Elko, a Sumerian potter living on the banks of the Euphrates,
had this reoccurring feeling that he was being watched. It would
come and go, and sometimes he forgot about it altogether, but then
sometimes he could be all alone and it was like someone was above
him looking down. He attributed it as the attention of the gods.
His own father thought him a fool, so maybe the gods did too, and
Elko was providing them with amusement.
Elko, son a farmer, heir to a long line of the most
successful farmers anyone had ever known, had turned down the
family trade to play with mud. That's how Unko, his father, would
put it. Playing with mud. Unko saw water as the power, water
flowing through their hand-dug ditches, irrigating the fields. Man
controlling the power of water from the great Euphrates.
Elko firmly believed it was not the water, it was the dirt.
The water merely followed where the dirt directed it. Hand-built
levees, hand dug ditches --- it was the dirt.
Control the dirt. Mold the soil into shapes from the mind's
imagination. Anything was possible!
His father couldn't argue that his son wasn't making a good
living --- he was. Elko worked as a potter, trading his bowls and
vessels for food and clothing, and he lived in a large home made
from sun-hardened bricks he made himself. He had a good woman and
they were soon expecting a child. Everyone outside his immediate
family held him in high regard as a man of ideas.
"Look at you! You call this work? You could be out growing
food, building aqueducts! Instead you sit in this fancy hut of
yours and play with mud. It's like you never grew up."