"Charles L. Harness - The Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

unmistakable, and should be of great interest to practicing sociologists and policemen." He turned from
the little group beginning to gather about him and beamed artlessly at the passing face of Colonel Grade.

Grade paused. "And just what are the signs of a renaissance?" he demanded.

"Mainly climatic change and enormously increased leisure, Colonel. Either alone can make a big
differenceтАФcombined, the result is multiplicative rather than additive."

Anna watched Bell's eyes rove the room and join with those of Martha Jacques, as he continued: "Take
temperature. In seven thousand B.C. homo sapiens, even in the Mediterranean area, was a shivering
nomad; fifteen or twenty centuries later a climatic upheaval had turned Mesopotamia, Egypt and the
Yangste valley into garden spots, and the first civilizations were born. Another warm period extending
over several centuries and ending about twelve hundred A.D. launched the Italian Renaissance and the
great Ottoman culture, before the temperature started falling again. Since the middle of the seventeenth
century, the mean temperature of New York City has been increasing at the rate of about one-tenth of a
degree per year. In another century, palm trees will be commonplace on Fifth Avenue." He broke off and
bowed benignantly. "Hello, Mrs. Jacques. I was just mentioning that in past renaissances, mild climates
and bounteous crops gave man leisure to think, and to create."

When the woman shrugged her shoulders and made a gesture as though to walk on, Bell continued
hurriedly: "Yes, those renaissances gave us the Parthenon, The Last Supper, the Taj Mahal. Then, the
artist was supreme. But this time it might not happen that way, because we face a simultaneous
technologic and climatic optimum. Atomic energy has virtually abolished labor as such, but without the
international leavening of common art that united the first Egyptian, Sumerian, Chinese and Greek cities.
Without pausing to consolidate his gains, the scientist rushes on to greater things, to Sciomnia, and to a
Sciomnic power source"тАФhe exchanged a sidelong look with the woman scientistтАФ"a machine which,
we are informed, may overnight fling man toward the nearer stars. When that day comes, the artist is
through...unless..."

"Unless what?" asked Martha Jacques coldly.

"Unless this Renaissance, sharpened and intensified as it has been by its double maxima of climate and
science, is able to force a response comparable to that of the Aurignacean Renaissance of twenty-five
thousand B.C., to wit, the flowering of the Cro-Magnon, the first of the modern men. Wouldn't it be
ironic if our greatest scientist solved Sciomnia, only to come a cropper at the hands of what may prove to
be one of the first primitive specimens of homo superiorтАФher husband?"

Anna watched with interest as the psychogeneticist smiled engagingly at Martha Jacques' frowning face,
while at the same time he looked beyond her to catch the eye of Ruy Jacques, who was plinking in
apparent aimlessness at the keyboard of the Fourier piano.

Martha Jacques said curtly: "I'm afraid, Dr. Bell, that I can't get too excited about your Renaissance.
When you come right down to it, local humanity, whether dominated by art or science, is nothing but a
temporary surface scum on a primitive backwoods planet."

Bell nodded blandly. "To most scientists Earth is admittedly commonplace. Psychogeneticists, on the
other hand, consider this planet and its people one of the wonders of the universe."

"Really?" asked Grade. "And just what have we got here that they don't have on Betelgeuse?"