"Frank Herbert - Destination Void 3 The Lazarus Effect" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

once cause for consternation, even death. As a Committeeman passing judgment on
life, the question I always ask myself and try to answer with my poor
understanding is: Will this new life, this infant, help us all survive? If
there is the remotest chance that it will contribute to this thing we call human
society I vote to let it live. And I have been rewarded time and again by that
hidden genius in cruel form, that mind plus distorted body which enrich us all.
I know I am correct in these decisions.

But my journal has developed a tendency to wander. I have decided that I am
secretly a philosopher. I want to know not only what, but why.

In the long generations since that terrible night when the last of Pandora's
true land-based islands exploded into molten lava, we have developed a peculiar
social duality, which I am convinced could destroy us all. We Islanders, with
our organic cities floating "willy-nilly" on the sea's surface, believe we have
formed the perfect society. We care for each other, for the inner other that
the skin (whatever shape or shade) protects. Then what is it about us that
insists on saying "us" and "them"? Is there a viciousness buried in us? Will
it explode us into violence against the excluded others?

Oh, Islanders exclude; this cannot be denied. Our jokes betray us. Anti-Mermen
jokes. "Merms," we call them. Or "pretties." And they call us "Mutes." It's
a grunt word no matter how you sound it.

We are jealous of Mermen. There it is. I have written it. Jealous. They have
the freedom of all the land beneath the sea. Merman mechanization depends on a
relatively uniform, traditional human body. Few Islanders can compete under
middleclass conditions, so they occupy the top of Merman genius or the depths of
its slums. Even so, Islanders who migrate down under are confined to Islander
communities . . . ghettos. Still the Islander idea of heaven is to pass for a
pretty.

Mermen repel the sea to survive. Their living space benefits from a kind of
stability underfoot. Historically, I must admit, humans show a preference for a
firm surface underfoot, air to breathe freely (although theirs is depressingly
damp) and solid things all around. They produce an occasional webbed foot or
hand but that, too, was common all down the lineage of the species. Merman
appearance is that of humans for as long as likenesses have been recorded; that
much we can see for ourselves. Besides, Clone Wars happened. Our immediate
ancestors wrote of this. Jesus Lewis did this to us. The visible evidence of
other is inescapable.

But I was writing about Merman nature. It is their self-proclaimed mission to
restore the kelp. But will the kelp be conscious? Kelp once more lives in the
sea. I have seen the effects in my lifetime and expect we've just about seen
the last of wavewalls. Exposed land will surely follow. Yet, how does that
subtract from this nature that I see in the Mermen?
By bringing back the kelp, they seek to control the sea. That is the Merman
nature: control.