"C. L. Moore - Greater Than Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

Sallie wanted the baby to be born in her father's home. It was a lovely place,
white-walled on low green hills above the Pacific. Sallie loved it. Even when
little Sue was big enough to travel she hated to think of leaving. And the
climate was so wonderful for the baby there- Anyhow, by then the Council had
begun to frown over Bill Cory's
work. After all, perhaps he wasn't really cut out to be a scientist- Sallie's
happiness was more important than any man's job, and Sallie could never be
really happy in Science City.
The second baby was a girl, too. There were a lot of girls being born
nowadays. The telenews broadcasters joked about it. A good sign, they said.
When a preponderance of boys was born, it had always meant war. Girls should
bring peace and plenty for the new generation.
Peace and plenty-that was what mattered most to Bill and Sallie Cory now. That
and their two exquisite daughters and their home on the green Pacific hills.
Young Susan was growing up into a girlhood so enchanting that Bill suffused
with pride and tenderness every time he thought of her. She had Sallie's
beauty and blondeness, but there was a resolution in her that had been Bill's
once, long ago. He liked to think of her, in daydreams, carrying on the work
that he would never finish now.
Time ran on, years telescoping pleasantly into uneventful years. Presently the
Cory girls were growing up. . . were married. . . were mothers. The
grandchildren were girls, too. When Grandfather Cory joined his wife in the
little graveyard on the sea-turned hill beyond the house, the Cory name died
with him, though there was in his daughter's level eyes and in her daughter's
look of serene resolution something more intrinsically Bill Cory than his
name. The name might die, but something of the man who had borne it lived on
in his descendants.


Girls continued to outnumber boys in the birth records as the generations
passed. It was happening all over the world, for no reason that anyone could
understand. It didn't matter much, really. Women in public offices were
proving very efficient; certainly they governed more peacefully than men. The
first woman president won her office
on a platform that promised no war so long as a woman dwelt in the White
House.
Of course, some things suffered under the matriarchy. Women as a sex are not
scientists, not inventors, not mechanics or engineers or architects. There
were men enough to keep these essentially masculine arts alive-that is, as
much of them as the new world needed. There were many changes. Science City,
for instance. Important, of course, but not to the extent of draining the
country dry to maintain it. Life went on very nicely without too much
machinery.
The tendency was away from centralized living in these new days. Cities spread
out instead of up. Skyscrapers were hopelessly old-fashioned. Now parklands
and gardens stretched between low-roofed houses where the children played all
day. And war was a barbarous memory from those nightmare years when men still
ruled the world.
Old Dr. Phillips, head of the dwindling and outmoded Science City, provoked
President Wiliston into a really inspiring fury when he criticized the modem