"Tendeleo's Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Ian)

УCome on then,Ф said the officer. He was smiling now. УYou wanted to see the Chaga.Ф
He gave us over to a tall American man with red hair and a red beard and blue eyes. His name was Byron and he spoke such bad Swahili that he did not understand when Little Egg said to me, Уhe looks like a vampire.Ф
УI speak English,Ф I told him and he looked relieved.
He took us through the tractors to the tower in the middle, the tallest. It was painted white, with the word UNECTA big in blue on the side, and beneath it, the name, Nyandarua Station. We got into a small metal cage. Byron closed the door and pressed a button. The cage went straight up the side of the building. I tell you this, that freight elevator was more frightening than any stories about murdering gangs of vultures. I gripped the handrail and closed my eyes. I could feel the whole base swaying below me.
УOpen your eyes,Ф Byron said. УYou wouldnТt want to come all this way and miss it.Ф
As we rose over the tops of the trees the land opened before me. Nyandarua Station was moving down the eastern slopes of the Aberdare range: the Chaga was spread before me like a wedding kanga laid out on a bed.
It was as though someone had cut a series of circles of colored paper and let them fall on the side of the mountains. The Chaga followed the ridges and the valleys, but that was all it had to do with our geography. It was completely something else. The colors were so bright and silly I almost laughed: purples, oranges, lots of pink and deep red. Veins of bright yellow. Real things, living things were not these colors. This was a Hollywood trick, done with computers for a film. I guessed we were a kilometer from the edge. It was not a very big Chaga, not like the Kilimanjaro Chaga that had swallowed Moshi and Arusha and all the big Tanzanian towns at the foot of the mountain and was now halfway to Nairobi. Byron said this Chaga was about five kilometers across and beginning to show the classic form, a series of circles. I tried to make out the details. I thought details would make it real to me. I saw jumbles of reef-stuff the color of wiring. I saw a wall of dark crimson trees rise straight for a tremendous height. The trunks were as straight and smooth as spears. The leaves joined together like umbrellas. Beyond them, I saw things like icebergs tilted at an angle, things like open hands, praying to the sky, things like oil refineries made out of fungus, things like brains and fans and domes and footballs. Things like other things. Nothing that seemed a thing in itself. And all this was reaching toward me. But, I realized, it would never catch me. Not while I remained here, on this building that was retreating from it down the foothills of the Aberdares, fifty meters every day.
We were close to the top of the building. The cage swayed in the wind. I felt sick and scared and grabbed the rail and that was when it became real for me. I caught the scent of the Chaga on the wind. False things have no scent. The Chaga smelled of cinnamon and sweat and soil new turned up. It smelled of rotting fruit and diesel and concrete after rain. It smelled like my mother when she had The Visit. It smelled like the milk that babies spit out of their mouths. It smelled like televisions and the stuff the Barber Under the Tree put on my fatherТs hair and the womenТs holy place in the shamba. With each of these came a memory of Gichichi and my life and people. The scent stirred the things I had recently learned as a woman. The Chaga became real for me there, and I understood that it would eat my world.
While I was standing, putting all these things that were and would be into circles within circles inside my head, a white man in faded jeans and Timberland boots rushed out of a sliding door onto the elevator.
УByron,Ф he said, then noticed that there were two little Kenyan girls there with him. УWhoТre these?Ф
УIТm Tendelщo and this is my sister,Ф I said. УWe call her Little Egg. WeТve come to see the Chaga.Ф
This answer seemed to please him.
УIТm called Shepard.Ф He shook our hands. He also was American. УIТm a Peripatetic Executive Director. That means I rush around the world finding solutions to the Chaga.Ф
УAnd have you?Ф
For a moment he was taken aback, and I felt bold and rude. Then he said, Уcome on, letТs see.Ф
УShepard,Ф Byron the vampire said. УItТll wait.Ф
He took us in to the base. In one room were more white people than I had seen in the whole of my life. Each desk had a computer but the peopleЧmost of them were men dressed very badly in shorts, with beardsЧdid not use them. They preferred to sit on each otherТs desks and talk very fast with much gesturing.
УAre African people not allowed in here?Ф I asked.
The man Shepard laughed. Everything I said that tour he treated as if it had come from the lips of a wise old mТzee. He took us down into the Projection Room where computers drew huge plans on circular tables: of the Chaga now, the Chaga in five years time and the Chaga when it met with its brother from the south and both of them swallowed Nairobi like two old men arguing over a stick of sugar cane.
УAnd after Nairobi is gone?Ф I asked. The maps showed the names of all the old towns and villages, under the Chaga. Of course. The names do not change. I reached out to touch the place that Gichichi would become.
УWe canТt project that far,Ф he said. But I was thinking of an entire city, vanished beneath the bright colors of the Chaga like dirt trodden into carpet. All those lives and histories and stories. I realized that some names can be lost, the names of big things, like cities, and nations, and histories.
Next we went down several flights of steep steel stairs to the Уlab levels.Ф Here samples taken from the Chaga were stored inside sealed environments. A test tube might hold a bouquet of delicate fungi, a cylindrical jar a fistful of blue spongy fingers, a tank a square meter of Chaga, growing up the walls and across the ceiling. Some of the containers were so big people could walk around inside. They were dressed in bulky white suits that covered every part of them and were connected to the wall with pipes and tubes so that it was hard to tell where they ended and alien Chaga began. The weird striped and patterned leaves looked more natural than the UNECTA people in their white suits. The alien growing things were at least in their right world.
УEverything has to be isolated.Ф Mr. Shepard said.
УIs that because even out here, it will start to attack and grow?Ф I asked.
УYou got it.Ф
УBut I heard it doesnТt attack people or animals,Ф I said.
УWhere did you hear that?Ф this man Shepard asked.
УMy father told me,Ф I said mildly.
We went on down to Terrestrial Cartography, which was video-pictures the size of a wall of the world seen looking down from satellites. It is a view that is familiar to everyone of our years, though there were people of my parentsТ generation who laughed when they heard that the world is a ball, with no string to hold it up. I looked for a long timeЧit is the one thing that does not pale for lookingЧbefore I saw that the face of the world was scarred, like a Giriama womanТs. Beneath the clouds, South America and South Asia and mother Africa were spotted with dots of lighter color than the brown-green land. Some were large, some were specks, all were precise circles. One, on the eastern side of Africa, identified this disease of continents to me. Chagas. For the first time I understood that this was not a Kenyan thing, not even an African thing, but a whole world thing.
УThey are all in the south,Ф I said. УThere is not one in the north.Ф
УNone of the biological packages have seeded in the northern hemisphere. This is what makes us believe that there are limits to the Chaga. That it wonТt cover our whole world, pole to pole. That it might confine itself only to the southern hemisphere.Ф
УWhy do you think that?Ф
УNo reason at all.Ф
УYou just hope.Ф
УYeah. We hope.Ф
УMr. Shepard,Ф I said. УWhy should the Chaga take away our lands here in the south and leave you rich people in the north untouched? It does not seem fair.Ф
УThe universe is not fair, kid. Which you probably know better than me.Ф
We went down then to Stellar Cartography, another dark room, with walls full of stars. They formed a belt around the middle of the room, in places so dense that individual stars blurred into masses of solid white.
УThis is the Silver River,Ф I said. I had seen this on GraceТs familyТs television, which they had taken with them.
УSilver river. It is that. Good name.Ф
УWhere are we?Ф I asked.
Shepard went over to the wall near the door and touched a small star down near his waist. It had a red circle around it. Otherwise I do not think even he could have picked it out of all the other small white stars. I did not like it that our sun was so small and common. I asked, УAnd where are they from?Ф
The UNECTA man drew a line with his finger along the wall. He walked down one side of the room, halfway along the other, before he stopped. His finger stopped in a swirl of rainbow colors, like a flame.
УRho Ophiuchi. ItТs just a name, it doesnТt matter. WhatТs important is that itТs a long long way from usЕso far it takes lightЧand thatТs as fast as anything can goЧeight hundred years to get there, and itТs not a planet, or even a star. ItТs what we call a nebula, a huge cloud of glowing gas.Ф
УHow can people live in a cloud?Ф I asked. УAre they angels?Ф
The man laughed at that.
УNot people,Ф he said. УNot angels either. Machines. But not like you or I think of machines. Machines more like living things, and very very much smaller. Smaller even than the smallest cell in your body. Machines the size of chains of atoms, that can move other atoms around and so build copies of themselves, or copies of anything else they want. And we think those gas clouds are trillions upon trillions of those tiny, living machines.Ф
УNot plants and animals,Ф I said.
УNot plants and animals, no.Ф
УI have not heard this theory before.Ф It was huge and thrilling, but like the sun, it hurt if you looked at it too closely. I looked again at the swirl of color, colored like the Chaga scars on EarthТs face, and back at the little dot by the door that was my light and heat. Compared to the rest of the room, they both looked very small. УWhy should things like this, from so far away, want to come to my Kenya?Ф