"L. Sprague De Camp - The Gnarly Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Camp L Sprague)

lot of warmth into his name. "There's an argument as to whether your
people interbred with mine, when mine overran Europe at the end of
the Mousterian. It's been thought that the 'old black breed' of the
west coast of Ireland might have a little Neanderthal blood."
He grinned slightly. "Well-yes and no. There never was any back
in the Stone Age, as far as I know. But these long-lipped Irish are
my fault."
"How?"
"Believe it or not, but in the last fifty centuries there have
been some women of your species that didn't find me too repulsive.
Usually there were no offspring. But in the Sixteenth Century I went
to Ireland to live. They were burning too many people for witchcraft
in
the rest of Europe to suit me at that time. And there was a woman.
The result this time was a flock of hybrids-cute little devils they
were. So the 'old black breed' are my descendants."
"What did happen to your people?" asked McGannon. 'Were they
killed off?"
The gnarly man shrugged. "Some of them. We weren't at all
warlike. But then the tall ones, as we called them, weren't either.
Some of the tribes of the tall ones looked on us as legitimate prey,
but most of them let us severely alone. I guess they were almost as
scared of us as we were of them. Savages as primitive as that are
really pretty peaceable people. You have to work so hard, and there
are so few of you, that there's no object in fighting wars. That
comes later, when you get agriculture and livestock, so you have
something worth stealing.
"I remember that a hundred years after the tall ones had come,
there were still Neanderthalers living in my part of the country. But
they died out. I think it was that they lost their ambition. The tall
ones were pretty crude, but they were so far ahead of us that our
things and our customs seemed silly. Finally we just sat around and
lived on what scraps we could beg from the tall ones' camps. You
might say we died of an inferiority complex."
"What happened to you?" asked McGannon.
"Oh, I was a god among my own people by then, and naturally I
represented them in dealings with the tall ones. I got to know the
tall ones pretty well, and they were willing to put up with me after
all my own clan were dead. Then in a couple of hundred years they'd
forgotten all about my people, and took me for a hunchback or
something. I got to - be pretty good at flintworking, so I could earn
my keep. When metal came in I went into that, and finally into
blacksmithing. If you put all the horseshoes I've made in a pile,
they'd-well, you'd have a damn big pile of horseshoes anyway."
"Did you limp at that time?" asked McGannon.
"Uk-huh. I busted my leg back in the Neolithic. Fell out of a
tree, and had to set it myself, because there wasn't anybody around.
Why?"
"Vulcan," said McGannon softly.
"Vulcan?" repeated the gnarly man. "Wasn't he a Greek god or