"Delany, Samuel R - The Einstein Intersection 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

"Can't they run a paternity check? The traveling folk-doctors do it all the time in my village."
"I didn't say they didn't know who his father was. I said he had none."
I frowned.
"How are your genetics?"
"I can draw a dominance chart," I said. Most people, even from the tiniest villages, knew their genetics, even if they couldn't add. The human chromosome system was so inefficient in the face of the radiation level that genetics was survival knowledge. I've often wondered why we didn't invent a more compatible method of reproduction to go along with our own three way I-guess-you'd-call-it-sexual devision. Just lazy. "Go on," I said to Spider.
"Green-eye had no father," Spider repeated.
"Parthenogenesis?" I asked. "That's impossible. The sex distinguishing chromosome is carried by the male. Females and androgynes only carry genetic equipment for producing other females. He'd have to be a girl, with haploid chromosomes, and sterile. And he certainly isn't a girl." I thought a moment. "Of course if he were a bird, it would be a different matter. The females carry the sex distinguishing chromosomes there." I looked out over the herd. "Or a lizard."
"But he's not," Spider said.
I agreed. "That's amazing," I said, looking back towards the fire where the amazing boy slept.
Spider nodded. "When he was born, wise men came from all over to examine him. He is haploid. But he's quite potent and quite male, though a rather harried life has made him chaste by temperament."
"Too bad."
Spider nodded. "If he would join actively in the solstice orgies or make some appeasing gesture in the autumnal harvest celebrations, a good deal of the trouble could be avoided."
I raised an eyebrow. "Who's to know if he takes part in the orgies? Don't you hold them in the dark of the moon in Branning?"
Spider laughed. "Yes. But at Branning-at-sea, it's become a rather formal business; it's carried on with artificial insemination. The presentation of the seed-especially by the men of important families-gets quite a bit of publicity."
"Sounds very dry and impersonal."
"It is. But efficient. When a town has more than a million people in it, you can't just turn out the lights and let everybody run wild in the streets the way you can in a small village. They tried it that way a couple of times, back when Branning-at-sea was much smaller, and even then the results were-"
"A million people?" I said. "There are a million people in Branning-at-sea?"
"Last census there were three million six hundred fifty thousand."
I whistled. "That's a lot."
"That's more than you can imagine."
I looked across the herd of dragons; only a couple of hundred.

"Who wants to take part in an orgy of artificial insemination?" I asked.
"In a larger society," Spider said, "things have to be carried on that way. Until there's a general balancing out of the genetic reservoir, the only thing to do is to keep the genes mixing, mixing, mixing. But we have become clannish, more so in places like Branning-at-sea than in the hills. How to keep people from having no more than one child by the same partner. In a backwoods settlement, a few nights of license take care of it, pretty much. In Branning, things have to be assured by mathematical computation. And families have sprung up that would be quite glad to start doubling their children if given half a chance. Anyway, Green-eye just goes about his own business, occasionally saying very upsetting things to the wrong person. The fact that he's different and immune to Kid Death, from a respected family, and rather chary of ritual observances makes him quite controversial. Everybody blames the business on his parthenogenetic birth."
"They frown on that even where I come from," I told Spider. "It means his genetic structure is identical with his mother's. That will never do. If that happens enough, we shall all return to the great rock and the great roll in no time."
"You sound like one of those pompous fools at Branning." He was annoyed.
"Huh! That's just what I've been taught."
"Think a little more. Every time you say that, you bring Green-eye a little closer to death."
"What?"
"They've tried to kill him before. Why do you think he was sent away?"

"Oh," I said. "Then why is he coming back?"
"He wants to." Spider shrugged. "Can't very well stop him if he wants to."
I grunted. "You don't make Branning-at-sea sound like a very nice place. Too many people, half of them crazy, and they don't even know how to have an orgy." I took up my blade. "I don't have time for nonsense like that."
The music dirged from Spider. I played light piping sounds.
"Lobey."
I looked back at him.
"Something's happening, Lobey, something now that's happened before, before when the others were here. Many of us are worried about it. We have the stories about what went on, what resulted when it happened to the others. It may be very serious. All of us may be hurt."
"I'm tired of the old stories," I said, "their stories. We're not them; we're new, new to this world, this life. I know the stories of Lo Orpheus and Lo Ringo. Those are the only ones I care about. I've got to find Friza."
"Lobey-"
"This other is no concern of mine." I let a shrill note. "Wake your herders, Spider. You have dragons to drive."
I galloped My Mount forward. Spider didn't call again.
Before the sun hit apogee the edge of the City cleft the horizon. As I swung my whip in the failing heat, I permutated Green-eye's last words, beating out thoughts in time: if there were death, how might I gain Friza? That love was enough, if wise and articulate and daring. Or thinking of La Dire, who would have amended it (dragons clawed from the warm sand to the leafy hills), there is no death, only rhythm. When the sand reddened behind us, and the foundering beasts, with firmer footing, hastened, I took out my knife and played. The City was behind us.

Dragons loped easy now across the gorse. A stream ribboned the knolly land and the beasts stopped to slosh their heads in the water, scraping their hind feet on the bank, through grass, through sand, to black soil. The water lapped their knees, grew muddy as they tore the water-weeds. A fly bobbed on a branch, preening the crushed prism of his wing (a wing the size of my foot) and thought a linear, arthropod music. I played it for him, and he turned the red bowl of his eye to me and whispered wondering praise. Dragons threw back their heads, gargling. There is no death. Only music.


Whanne, as he strod alonge the shakeynge lee, The roddie levynne glesterrd on hys headde; Into hys hearte the azure vapoures spreade; He wrythde arounde yn drearie dernie payne;- Whanne from his lyfe-bloode the rodde lemes were fed, He felle an hepe of ashes on the playne.
Thomas Chatterton/English Metamorphosis