"Alan Dean Foster - Damned 1 - Call to Arms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

upon the sickle. The Ashregan responded. An efficient species, physically strong but not particularly
intelligent or imaginative. One-who-Decides thought of them as catchalls, as nonspecialists who could be
relied upon to do a little of everything efficiently but nothing especially well. They made good supervisors,
good integrators.

The Commander listened to the report and accepted the slight bow which passed for a sign of respect
among the Ashregan peoples before dismissing the officer with a slight mental push that was
simultaneously reassuring and rewarding. The ability to do that was the other thing which distinguished the
Amplitur from all other intelligences. Even from the Korath, who for sheer intellectual capacity exceeded
their Amplitur mentors.

Only the Amplitur possessed projective minds. Only they could convey through thinking alone their
wishes, desires, and the pure beauty of the Purpose. All other races were receivers, sensitive to varying
degree to Amplitur projections. Those who were naturally deficient could be biologically altered to make
them more receptive, and their newfound receptivity passed on to succeeding generations. The Amplitur
were deft bioengineers, and the altered races did not object to the procedure. Why should they, when it
strengthened their bonds within the Purpose? Furthermore, the Amplitur could only project. They could
not truly тАЭreadтАЭ the minds of their allies. There was no question of invasion of privacy, a basic need which
the Amplitur themselves understood. Talented though they were, the Amplitur had yet to find a way to
alter the mind of another being to make it projective. The burden of projection therefore remained heavily
and solely their province.

Perhaps that was why the Amplitur had been the race chosen to reveal the Purpose to an ignorant
universe, thought One-who-Decides. Other peoples had been given strong legs and muscles to drive
them. The invertebrate Amplitur had been compensated for their physical deficiencies with the ability to
project. Thanks to their peculiar ability, feelings and actions could be communicated among peoples of
antagonistic evolutionary backgrounds, with the Amplitur acting as relays for the demands of the
Purpose. There was no loneliness within the Purpose. All worked together to advance it. Perhaps in time
another species would achieve projection, or Amplitur scientists would devise a way to modify another
mind to project as well as receive. That would be a grand day for all. And presently one entirely
hypothetical, mused One-who-Decides. Enough to be content with the ample work still to be done.

It might not be necessary to use weapons. The Amplitur could project much besides orders and good
feelings. Uncertainty, discomfort, and as a last resort and then only to advance the Purpose, pain. If
applied selectively to ruling members of a hesitant species, this was sometimes enough to mute their
resistance. When it was not, an individual or two might perish. That was still preferable to an armed
assault on the surface of an inhabited world. That was not going to happen here, One-who-Decides
thought firmly. War was the last resort of the incompetent. The proper thing to do was not to place
oneself in a position where such an outrage was required. The very thought of it sent a subcutaneous
ripple down the mottled torso.

Sometimes the Commander wondered what it would be like to have a skeleton instead of a flexible
internal webwork of ligaments and tendons. Bones were an evolutionary throwback, of course, restrictive
and confining. They compelled the species to concentrate on physical development to the concurrent
neglect of the mind. All the higher intelligences were invertebrates, with only a few exceptions, like the
Ashregan and Crigolit.

Amplitur bioengineers had managed to free individual Ashregan from their skeletons. But the results,
while functional, were considered aesthetically unpleasing to the species involved. So there was very little
work done in that area anymore. The Ashregan and their biological relations were doomed to haul their