"Philip Jose Farmer - Tongues of the Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

Wellers said, "I didn't hear a thing. I wouldn't want to start an investigation of that sort. The hunters might
start sniffing around my lair and unearth the fact that I sometimes mix a high-minded concern for mathematics with an
interest in things they might consider low-minded."
The two soldiers laughed and walked from the lab. Outside Broward said, "Something puzzles me. You said
you wouldn't commit the sin of Onan even if ordered to. Why not? An orthodox Hebrew might object to giving his
sperm to the bank, but you... ?"
"We'll talk about that later," Moshe replied. "During the trip out."
Suddenly, he lost his gayety; his face was grave.
They walked silently down the corridors hewn out of basalt Just before they parted at a junction, Moshe
rubbed his chin. In a low tope, as if talking to himself or some third party, he said, "All right. I'll grow a beard."
"What?" Broward exclaimed, but Moshe was walking away.
A moment later, Broward heard his name over the IP. It was followed by an announcement that the takeoff
was delayed. There was a malfunction in the anti-radiation field generator. His scalp felt icy; he remembered Wellers'
comment about this possibility.
After promising to check in from time to time, Broward walked towards the conference room. He passed
through silent hall after hall, his way lit before him by bright luminescent panels which sprang into glow as he neared
them. Before him was blackness and after him was blackness. He was enveloped by a moving halo. Was this, he
thought, the plight of the human being? Unable to see the past and the future, only capable of viewing his immediate
time and location. True, he knew where he had been and thought he knew where he was going. But, if the lights failed,
could he go towards his destination without taking the wrong turn?
Under his feet, the rock trembled as the borers far under drove in their quest for water. What if their goal
turned out to be a deposit of some combination of explosive chemicals? The blast could conceivably wreck the base
and kill every one on it. Then what? There would be a few men and women left on the Russian and Chinese bases and
a few in the Ganymedan and Mercutian bases (if these still existed). The people of Mars (the enemies) would determine
the future of mankind (if the Martians had not been exterminated). It was true that the large Axe fleet was moving
towards Mars. But the ships might contain very few women.
What if Nature or God or Whoever decided that mankind was so few in numbers he was now below the
survival level? And, in the so far inscrutable ways of the universe, the women left would just cease to bear? Consider
those species that had in the past been reduced to near-extinction on Earth. A few females still lived, theoretically
capable of reproducing and of starting anew the species. But, for some reason, they could not have young. Nature had
called a halt; she had turned her back on the species.
If this should happen to us, thought Broward, we deserve it. Man, the Mad Thinker, the Irrational Rationalist,
the Illogical Logician who thought himself into oblivion.
 "The next thing you know," he muttered to himself, "I'll be believing in God." And he considered how the
loneliness and the darkness had thrust him so swiftly into the mental condition of the frightened savage.
Then, he was in the well-lighted hall leading to the conference room, and Ingrid Nashdoi was coming through
the door towards him. She looked furious, and she started to walk by him. But he reached out and seized her arm.
"What's the matter?"
"Take your hands off me!" she cried. "You... you man!"
"All right," he said gently. "What's my gender done to yours?"
Tears streamed down her cheeks. "They just decided that it's only fair... for the men, of course, never mind
us... oh, those men..."
"You're incoherent," he said. "And all the time I thought you were Ingrid."
"Jokes! Jokes at a time like this! Can't you see I'm crying?"
"I'm just trying to calm you down."
She put her head on his shoulder. His arms went around her, and her shoulders began to shake while her
tears wet his uniform.
"They've decided... to make every woman be the mate of two or more men... or whatever the proportion of
men to women might be! It's for the good of humanity... they say. And there were women who voted along with the
men for it! Women!"