"Noel K Hannan - Thoughts On Life And Death From The Tarkaha" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hannan Noel K)

guardians. Humans approach their obligation within the boundaries of their
own mortality, and for the most part think no further than the end of
their own lives, or perhaps that of their offspring."
"You are, of course, quite correct," said Connor. "We think as
individuals, with an individual's petty concerns and grievances, and an
individual's greed."
"The cult of the individual would have meant the destruction of the human
race had the Tarkaha not presented humankind with the means of
interstellar travel," said the Tarkaha.
"Yes. We would have been too busy killing each other, we may have never
explored another world, and eventually the sun would have boiled away. We
are very grateful, you know."
The Tarkaha smiled. "Interstellar travel is the least of our gifts. If we
had not repaired your ozone layer and rebalanced the chemical
constitutions of your atmosphere and oceans, you would never have survived
long enough to watch your sun boil and vanish."
Connor rubbed unconsciously at his bare arms. He was wearing a thin
short-sleeved shirt and a tie, knot loosened at the neck. It still felt
strange to be outside in direct sunlight dressed like this. A few years
before, prior to the dramatic, scifi movie arrival of the Tarkaha, he
would not have been able to stand on this exposed clifftop without a
protection suit, a polarised sun visor and a heatshield canopy. They did
indeed have much for which to thank the Tarkaha.
"Yet the Tarkaha are individual too," said the alien. "Individual and
communal at the same time. While we can join together in a collective mind
more powerful than anything you can comprehend, we can also exist as
wholly individual entities, billions of physical light years from the Core
Mind, in absolute solitude for aeons. We do this, sometimes, on missions
to spread enlightenment and knowledge to progress wayward civilisations.
We are, on occasion, called gods by cultures such as your own.
Occasionally, we are misrepresented and our well-intentioned actions
become counter-productive. We may be immortal, but we are not infallible."
A strange smile crossed the Tarkaha's features. "The Tarkaha has visited
Earth before, you know."
"I know," said Connor, smiling. It had been a bad few years for
Christianity, Islam, Judaism and every other major religion (although
Buddhism was bearing up remarkably well under the alien onslaught on
humanity's main crutches). Even when the stark proof of the fictionalised
Good Books was offered, many chose to stay shaken (if a little stirred)
believers in the old ways. The mass suicides had been particularly
spectacular, and fascinating to the death-obsessed Tarkaha.
"So, it is unusual to find that humankind is the closest philosophical
relation to the Tarkaha in the known Universe," said the Tarkaha. "The
evolution of your species to the higher plane, the shedding of the
physical self, was well underway before we made contact, with your
developments in silicon-based intelligences and the investigations into
the conversion of brain patterns into digital code. But you would never
have survived to see those projects reach fruition."
Connor was becoming a little rankled. He was under strict instructions not
to anger members of the alien delegation, but even the due deference with