"Bc31" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry & Pournelle)

Beowulf's Children
Chapter 31

FIRECRACKERS

Nature is but a name for an effect
Whose cause is God.
-WILLIAM COWPER, The Task

Cadmann woke before dawn. The rooms in the Visitors' Quarters were plain and bare, cots, sleeping bags and nightstand, bath facilities down the hall. When he came back from the toilet he wasn't sleepy. His backpack stood against one wall and for a moment he thought of getting out his mini-stove to make coffee, but decided against it. The stove's roar would wake Sylvia.
He dressed quietly and went to the mess hall to find coffee. The main room had an eastern view and he left the lights low, and scanned the horizon for the first sign of sunrise.
"Hello."
Cadmann turned to greet Big Chaka. "You have trouble sleeping too?"
"No, but I went to bed early," Chaka said.
"We all did. I've found coffee makings. Want some?"
"Please."
"Like old times. We don't go camping much now."
"Not since the children grew up," Chaka agreed.
An indifferent breeze blew down from the mountains behind them. Not warming, not cooling, just enough to ruffle the grass of the main compound, a slight ruffling of the grass in the glare of the safety floodlamps. There was a hint of light in the eastern sky. Cadmann and Chaka sat by the big window and waited for Tau Ceti to rise. There had been many times like this over the years, times to sit and think, to watch, to ruminate. Finally the first hint of light was golden blush above the mountains. Big Chaka sighed with pleasure.
"So," Cadmann said finally. "What do you think?"
"The children have done well," he said. "They have built a real community here."
"Yes. I'm impressed."
"And none too soon, I think. Avalon hasn't even begun to share her secrets," Chaka's voice was utterly content.
"This is what you came for, isn't it?"
"If you're an exobiologist, you go where the exobiology is," he said reasonably. "You know, we're probably the most interesting life-form on this planet."
"How so?"
"We should really study ourselves. Every single one of us came here because we had nothing--or not enough to hold us on Earth. I find that fairly telling, don't you?"
"You lost your family, didn't you?" Cadmann asked quietly.
"Yes." Chaka's toe drew a lazy circle on the wooden floor beneath him. "It was my fault. Food poisoning, in the middle Amazon. My family and I were there for the year conducting piranha research. There was a village celebration. They used some canned food they got from a trader."
His face tightened, but his voice was still steady. "Half the village died before we could get medical help. My wife and my daughter were among them."
"A good reason to get away."
Chaka took another deep sip. "I think that we had all just about used Earth up. I think that we all told ourselves different stories about it, but there were reasons. You were put out to pasture. Carlos is the remittance man of all time."
Cadmann grinned. "Isn't that the truth?" He was quiet for a moment. "How did you come to adopt Little Chaka?"
"You didn't know?"
"I never asked. One day we just noticed that he wasn't rotating out of your house."
"An accident, really." Chaka said. "We just gravitated toward each other. You know . . . it's odd, but Little Chaka might have been better suited to ectogynic birth than any of the other children."
"How so?"
"Well, he was New Guinea stock. I know that . . . I peeked. But he's huge at least partially because his parents received such fine nutrition. His father had a literary scholarship to Harvard. One of the cultural outreach programs. His mother was from Papua--a first-generation immigrant, and a national-caliber runner. Sprinted her way to a degree in poli sci. Both descended from people used to group parenting . . . as opposed to the nuclear family. Do you see where I'm heading?"
"I think so . . ." Cadmann mused.
"Most of the Bottle Babies are of northern European stock. A thousand generations of nuclear family. Which they were denied here on Avalon. And Little Chaka, who has the best resistance to that particular loneliness, had in some ways the most support."
"So you're saying he's not like the rest of them?"
"It's possible. He seems to have come out pretty well, don't you think?"
Cadmann thought of a question he had never asked. "What was your name before you changed it?"
"Denzel Washington." They both exploded with laughter. When they died down again, the first morning shadows streaked the ground outside. "When I was in college, it was quite fashionable to take African names. Who the hell knows about my real ancestry? It's all too mixed up. So I just latched on to a Zulu name, and ran with it. And I was young enough to choose the name of a warrior king."
Cadmann laughed with deep satisfaction. "A New Guinea Islander and a Chicago exobiologist both named after a Zulu war chief. That's rich."
The mess hall door opened, and Aaron and Little Chaka came in. Aaron paused in the doorway. The sky outside was just light enough to provide a background, and Aaron seemed huge, intimidatingly large. That was certainly an illusion, but . . .
Cadmann levered himself to his feet, consciously standing erect. Aaron was no taller than he, but was . . . larger. More full of life. Cadmann felt old. A baton was changing hands here, and it was impossible to mistake it, or mistake the implication.
Jessica came in behind Aaron. "Hi, Dad."
"Thanks for bringing us coffee," Aaron said. "Any left in the pot?"
"Sure," Cadmann said. "What's the schedule for the day?"