"Bc25" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry & Pournelle)

Beowulf's Children
Chapter 25

ASIA MINOR

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear, your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter.
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.
-WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Twelfth-Night

They were calling the Scribebeast "Asia."
"It's not that big," Jessica giggled, but Ruth's name stuck anyway.
Aaron had made time and commandeered the NickNack, and all to come see Asia. He'd brought Ruth Moskowitz and both of their chamels. Justin wondered what Jessica thought of that. He hadn't seen her in two days.
Ruth and Aaron rode Zwieback and Silver along the Scribe's long blue lip. One great eye was tracking them.
"Not there," Justin said into the comm card. "Aaron, see me? I'm on the rise east of you, with four tall horsemane trees behind me. Asia will go around the trees. You'll get a great view of the life-forms on her back . . . "
Why bother? They were halting now, both chamels, much too close to one of the great eyes. He hadn't really expected Aaron to take suggestions.
Anyway, were they really in danger? Asia flowed like a continent across the savannah. Or like a crippled old woman; you could observe motion. Justin sighed and raised his war specs. He and Ruth would get here eventually. It was nearly lunchtime, and their lunch was on its way, packed in the belly of a skeeter.
Even the chamels didn't seem nervous. One great eye gazed upon them, and that would have had Justin twitchy. Ruth gaped in delight and awe.
That didn't surprise Justin. But Aaron was doing that too: mouth open, face empty. Had any human being ever seen him like this? He suddenly turned Zwieback and trotted toward the hill. Ruth followed, belatedly.
Over the next hour most of the survey team gathered on the hill, skeeter, trikes, and all, to watch the passing of Asia.
The trees were festooned with wet blue blankets.
The Earth Born insisted that Cadzie-blue blankets must go everywhere humans went on the continent. It was nearly their only demand, and not so onerous as all that; but the blankets didn't arrive clean. Mothers borrowed them first. Babies lived in them for a few days. The Earth Born never had to wash their baby blankets; they just sent them to the mainland.
And the survey team had finally had it with the smell. They'd been washing blankets in what had been a grendel lake and was now a samlon reservoir. Clean blankets would dry while Asia passed.
Pterodons were wheeling above the Scribe; more held station above the watching humans. Ruth presently said, "Justin? The birds?"
"I pointed them out to Little Chaka. Then I had to listen to him lecture."
"They're eyes for the Scribe!"
"That's what Chaka thinks. The Harvester can't see through grass, but she can look up and see where the pterodons are. Early-warning system. If something came right at an eye she'd see it when it got close . . . what the hell would she do then, dodge? For that matter, what would a Scribe be afraid of?"
"A cliff?" Ruth glanced sideways at Aaron, but he maintained his silence. "She'd see a cliff before she went over. And the pterodons would show her where water was, wouldn't they? Where there's water, there's carrion. Where there are grendels, they'd fly higher."
"I don't think Asia gives an icy damn about grendels," Aaron said. "Ruth, a million years from now we still won't have found a bigger land beast."
"Breeding," Ruth said.
Justin frowned the question.
"How do Scribes find each other?"
"Maybe they're hermaphrodites."
Ruth shook her head. "Maybe, but--"
"Or maybe baby Scribe beasts are the males," Aaron said. "That's how grendels work it."
Jessica remembered what it had cost the First to learn that samlon were not only immature grendels, but were all males. They became females when they made the transformation from a fishlike swimmer that lived largely on pond scum to the adult amphibious omnivore.
"But think, the paths cross," Ruth said.
"Or used to cross," Justin said thoughtfully. "Cassandra, consider the Scribe beasts. Is it likely that the crossing patterns of their paths is random?"
"There is negligible probability that the crossings were caused by random walks," Cassandra said. "I record seven cases in which the paths altered to approach each other. This is from records of past decades. At present the probability that the paths will cross is under ten percent."
"They're avoiding each other now?"