"C M Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl - Wolfbane UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

Or ever.
The Citizen got a grip on himself and told his wife: "We shall dine at the oatmeal stall."
The Citizeness did not immediately reply. When Germyn glanced at her with well-maslced surprise he found her almost staring down the dim street, at a Citizen who moved almost in a stride, almost swinging his arms. Scarcely graceful.
"That might be more Wolf than man," she said doubtfully.
Germyn knew the fellow. Tropile was his name. One of those curious few who made their homes outside of Wheeling, though they were not farmers; Germyn had had banker's dealings with him.
"That is a careless man," he said, "and an ill-bred one." They moved toward the oatmeal stall with the gait of Citizens, arms limp, feet scarcely lifted, slumped forward a little. It was the ancient gait of fifteen hundred calories per day, not one of which could be squandered.
There was a need for more calories. So many for walking, so many for gathering food. So many for the economical pleasures of the Citizens, and so many more-oh, many more, these days!-to keep out cold. Yet there were no more calories; the diet the whole world lived on was a bare subsistence ration. It was impossible to farm well when half the world's land was part of the time drowned in the rising sea, part of the time smothered in falling snow. Citizens knew this and, knowing, did not struggle-it was ungraceful to struggle, particularly when one could not win. Only the horrors known as Wolves struggled, splurging calories, reckless of grace.
Wolves! Why must there be Wolves? Why must those few, secret, despicable monsters threaten the whole fabric of civilized behavior?
Of course, Roget Germyn himself had once been a Wolf-at least, a Cub. Everybody started out that way. That was what children were. You began by wailing when you were hungry and taking whatever there was to take. Little kids weren't expected to understand the rules of conduct. Certainly they were not equipped to understand how vital those rules were to survival itself.
Form follows function. The customs of Citizen Germyn's world developed out of urgent need. That tiny Sun, ne Moon, produced only enough warmth for marginal survival. There was not enough food to go around. There was not enough of anything to go around; so everyone was carefully schooled, from the age of
two onward, to eat sparingly, move slowly, contemplate instead of act. Even what one contemplated was carefully prescribed. It was not wise to daydream about food or new clothes or the pleasures of the marriage bed. Such dreams led to desires. Desires were hard to control. The best things to contemplate were sunsets, storm clouds, stars, the gracefully serendipitous trickle of a single raindrop down a windowpane-no one was ever impelled to desire a raindrop. Best of all was to meditate on connectivity. When you thought about how everything was connected to everything else- was a part of everything else-was everything else, why, then the mind emptied itself. There - was no "wanting" when you meditated on connectivity. There was no thinking. There was only being.
A well-brought-up Citizen could spend thousands of hours out of his life in such meditation-hours that were by definition saved from eating, acting, doing, lusting-any of those so very undesirable things.
The things that Wolves did.
One could go even farther. It sometimes happened that a Citizen would attain the ultimate. Non-acting rose to become non-wanting, and then non-thinking . . . and then, perhaps, he would attain the final grace:
Non-being.
When you attained non-being you simply disappeared, with a clap of nearby thunder. And all who were left behind would praise your memory-tepidly, and with dignity.
That was how Citizens should behave. That was how everyone did behave-
Except Wolves.
It was unseemly to think too much of Wolves. It led to anger, which was very wasteful of calories. Citizen Germyn turned his mind to more pleasant things.
He allowed himself his First Foretaste of the oatmeal. It would be warm in the bowl, hot in the throat, a comfort in the stomach. There was a great deal of pleasure there, in weather like this, when the cold plucked through the loosened seams and the wind came up the sides of the hills. Not that there wasn't pleasure in the cold itself, for that matter. It was proper that one should be cold now, just before the re-creation of the Sun, when the old Sun was smoky red and the new one not yet kindled.
"-Still looks like Wolf to me," his wife was muttering.
"Cadence," Germyn reproved his Citizen-ess, but took the sting out of it with a Quirked Smile. The man with the ugly manners was standing at the very bar of the oatmeal stall where they were heading. In the gloom of mid-morning he was all angles, and strained lines; his head was turned awkwardly on his shoulder, peering toward the back of the stall where the vendor was rhythmically measuring grain into a pot; his hands were resting helter-skelter on the counter, not hanging by his sides.
Citizen Germyn felt a faint shudder from
his wife. But he did not reprove her again, for who could blame her? The exhibition was revolting.
She said faintly, "Citizen, might we dine on bread this morning?"
He hesitated and glanced again at the ugly man. He said indulgently, knowing that he was indulgent: "On Sun Re-creation Morning, the Citizeness may dine on bread." Bearing in mind the occasion, it was only a small favor, and therefore a very proper one.
The bread was good, very good. They shared out the half-kilo between them and ate it in silence, as it deserved. Germyn finished his first portion and, in the prescribed pause before beginning his second, elected to refresh his eyes upward.
He nodded to his wife and stepped outside. Overhead the Old Sun parceled out its last barrel-scrapings of heat. It was larger than the stars around it, but many of them were nearly as bright. There was one star in Earth's sky which was brighter than the dying fire on the old Moon, but it happened to be in the other half of the heavens at this time. When it was visible, people looked at it wistfully. It was the Earth's parent star, receding always behind them.
Germyn shivered slightly in the dusky morning air. Wheeling, West Virginia, was a splendid place to be in the summer, when a New Sun was bright. Harvests were bountiful, the polar caps released their ice and the oceans returned to drown the coastal plains. It was
less good to be in these mountains when the Old Sun was dying. It was cold.
Cycle after cycle, as each Sun aged, Citizen Germyn and his Citizeness ritually debated the question of whether they should remain in Wheeling or join the more adventurous migrants in their trek to sea level, and the slightly warmer conditions along the coasts. Since they were model Citizens, the decision was always to remain-one wasted fewer calories that way. And of course the New Sun always came just when it was most needed-always had before, at least.
He was saved from pursuing that thought when a high-pitched male voice said: "Citizen Germyn, good morning."
Germyn was caught off balance. He took his eyes off the sky, half-turned, glanced at the face of the person who had spoken to him, raised his hand in the assurance-of-identity sign. It was all very quick and fluid-almost too quick, for he had had his fingers bent nearly into the sign for female friends; and this was a man. Citizen Boyne; Germyn knew him well; they had shared the Ice Viewing at Niagara a year before.
Germyn recovered quickly enough, but it had been disconcerting.
He improvised quickly: "There are stars^ but are stars still there if there is no Sun?" It was a hurried effort, he grieved, but no doubt Boyne would pick it up and carry it along; Boyne had always been very good, very graceful.
Boyne did no such thing. "Good morning," he said again, faintly. He glanced at the stars overhead as though trying to unravel what Germyn was talking about. He said accusingly, his voice cracking sharply: "There isn't any Sun, Germyn. What do you think of that?"
Germyn swallowed. "Citizen, perhaps you-"
"No Sun, you hear me!" The man sobbed, "It's cold, Germyn. The Pyramids aren't going to give us another Sun, do you know that? They're going to starve us, freeze us; they're through with us. We're done, all of us!" He was nearly screaming. All up and down Pine Street people were trying not to look at him, some of them failing.
Boyne clutched at Germyn helplessly. Revolted, Germyn drew back-bodily contact!
It seemed to bring the man to his senses^ Reason returned to his eyes. He said, "I-" He stopped, stared about him. "I think I'll have bread for breakfast," he said foolishly, and plunged into the stall.
Strained voice, shouting, clutching, no manners at all!
Boyne left behind him a shaken Citizen, caught half-way into the wrist-flip of parting, staring after him with jaw slack and eyes wide, as though Germyn had no manners either.
All this on Sun Re-creation Day!
What could it mean? Germyn wondered fretfully. Was Boyne on the point of- Could Boyne be about to-
He drew back from the thought. There was one thing that might explain Boyne's behav-
ior. But it was not a proper speculation for one Citizen to make about another.
All the same-Germyn dared the thought- all the same, it did seem almost as though Citizen Boyne were on the point of, well, running amok.
At the oatmeal stall, Glenn Tropile thumped on the counter.
The laggard oatmeal vendor finally brought the bowl of salt and the pitcher of thin milk. Tropile took his paper twist of salt from the top of the neatly arranged pile in the bowl. He glanced at the vendor; his fingers hesitated; then quickly he ripped the twist of paper into his oatmeal and covered it to the permitted level with the milk.
He ate quickly and efficiently, watching the street outside.