"Gordon R. Dickson - Jean Dupres" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

civilization just above the steam-engine level, boys and girls together until they were about nine years old.
Then the girls stayed where they were and started learning the chores of housekeeping the cities. But the
nine-year-old Klahari boys were pushed out to fend for themselves in the desert.
"Out there, it was help one another or perish. The boys formed loose bands or tribes and spent about
three years keeping themselves alive and helping each other stay alive. Their life was one of almost
perfect brotherhood. In the desert, their problem was survival and they shared every drop of water and
bite of food they could find. They were one for all and all for one, and at this age they were, literally,
emotionally incapable of violence or selfishness.
"At about twelve or thirteen, they began to grow out of this incapability, and look toward the jungle.
There it was, right alongside their sandy wastes with nothing to stop them entering itтАФnothing except the
older Klahari from age thirteen to seventeen. At this stage the young Klahari males shoot up suddenly
from five to about six and a half feet tall, then grow more gradually for the remaining four years in the
jungle. And, from the moment they enter the jungle, every other Klahari boy is potentially a mortal
enemy. In the jungle, food and drink are available for the reaching out of a hand; and there is nothing to
worry aboutтАФexcept taking as many other lives as possible while hanging on to your own."
"Klahari lives," a worried Ranger protested. "Why should they trouble us?"
"Why shouldn't they? It's eat or be eaten. They even join into groups, of up to a dozen, once they get
older and more jungle-experienced. In this way they can take single strays and smaller groups. This
works well enoughтАФexcept they have to watch their backs at all times among their own group-members.
There are no rules. This jungle is no-man's-land. Which was why the Klahari did not object to humans
settling here, originally. We were simply one more test for their maturing young men, trying to survive until
manhood, so they can get back into the cities."
They digested this and they didn't like it. Jen, the brightest in the squad, saw the connection at once.
 "Then that makes us humans fair game as well?"
"Right. Which is why this squad is out here in the jungle. Our job is simply that of a cop in a rough
neighborhoodтАФto roust and break up Klahari bands of more than a half-dozen together at once. The
young Klahari know that their clubs, crossbows and lances are no match for rifles, and there has to be at
least a half dozen of them together before they are liable to try assaulting a house or attacking a planter in
his fields. So the arrangement with planters, soldier squads and Klahari is all neat and tidy most of the
timeтАФin fact all of the time except for one year out of every seventeen that makes up a generation for
them. Because, once a generation, things pile up.
"It's the five-year Klahari that cause it. Post-seniors some people call them, as we call the younger
Klahari freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors, according to the number of years they have been off
the desert and in the jungle. Post-seniors are Klahari who are old enough to go back to the cities and be
allowed inтАФbut are hesitating about it. They are Klahari who are wondering if they might not prefer it
being top dog in the jungle to starting out on the bottom again, back in the cities. They are Klahari toying
with the idea of settling down for life in the jungles and their impulse to kill any other Klahari is damped
by maturity and experience. They, unlike those of the first four years of jungle experience, are capable of
trusting each other to gather in large bands with a combined purposeтАФto seize and hold permanently
areas of the jungle as private kingdoms."
They were listening closely nowтАФand no one was smiling.
"In the old days, before we humans came, this process once a seventeen-year generation would end
inevitably in pitched wars between large bands largely composed of post-seniors. These wars disposed
of the genetic variants among the Klahari, and got rid of those who might have interrupted the age-old,
cities-desert-jungle-cities-again pattern of raising the Klahari males and eliminating the unfit of each
generation. Before we came, everything was tidy. But with us humans now in the jungle, the post-seniors
in their bands every seventeen years turn most naturally against us."
My talk had some good effect because the ones who stayed on made good Rangers. They knew
what they were doingтАФand why.
One season followed another and I had my hands full by the time I saw young Jean Dupres again. My