"Tloh04" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry & Pournelle)

The Legacy of Heorot
Chapter 4

RAINY NIGHT

Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.
WILLIAM BLAKE, Appendix to the "Songs of Innocence and Experience: A Divine Image"

Six weeks after the incident at the coops, a mild eruption on the northwest side of the island shook the ground. Three days later threadlike wisps of ash still drifted from the air. The mists that enshrouded the mountain peaks had dropped in a gray blanket, diffusing the light of Tau Ceti.
Streamers of light flashed within the cloud banks, and thunder echoed distantly onto the plain. Cadmann slipped his tractor into neutral and watched the clouds cautiously. The engine's hum strummed his spine.
"Don't worry," Mary Ann called to him. "That's just a little mountain storm. It doesn't care about us." She moved between knee-high rows of plants, checking the slender soil-meter rods for moisture and pH.
The alfalfa replanting was being cautiously hailed as a success. Failure of the first crop was attributed to the thorn trees which had once dominated the plain. When the trees were burned away their taproots remained alive underground, leaching moisture from the soil. Alfalfa, with a potential yield of ten tons per acre, requires tremendous amounts of water. Omar Isfahan and Jon van Don, two of the Colony's engineers, had planned and installed a more extensive irrigation system.
"We could use the water, either way. But if it's going to rain, I'm wasting my time up here."
"Practice. Practice. We all take rotation in the fields." Mary Ann's smile was as brilliant as her hair, and it warmed him. They had grown closer in the weeks since his talk with Sylvia aboard Geographic.
Hibernation Instability. He saw her differently now. She wasn't bright . . . and yet she had been. Wounded in the war to capture Avalon; wounded in his war.
The electrified fences had been expanded and strengthened. When there was no additional trouble, the animals were turned out into the northern pasture. Some of the older lambs and calves were already grazing contentedly.
No additional trouble . . .
Cadmann liked the sound of that, even if there was a part of him that didn't quite believe it. (Didn't want to believe it?)
He had returned twice to Geographic. He liked that. Checking the embryos was sheer routine; but one side of the crew lounge was a wide window. Cadmann could sit and look up at Avalon, and feel peace.
So beautiful. Spirals of white storm, blazing white of polar caps, the spine of jagged white-capped mountain range along the single continent . . . white against the rich blue of a water-and-oxygen atmosphere, a world that men could take and tame.
Zack had been right. Their grandchildren would conquer this world, and the first hundred and sixty colonists would be remembered for all time.
Immortality.
At what price? A century of sleep? Brain damage for a few; Ernst and Mary Ann and Carolyn and, yes, Terry, were paying the price for all. But for the rest: bruises and sprains, and maybe a few bad dreams? He had to laugh. The pilgrims who had founded the American continent had paid far more dearly to accomplish less.
Tau Ceti Four's colonials had it easy.
The air was suddenly cold. Raindrops spattered against his hands and the hood of the tractor.
"Shit-oh-dear," Mary Ann said, gazing up at the clouds. They coiled angrily in the sky like a vast heap of coals: black around the edges, fire flickering in the core. The lightning flashes were brighter and closer, and the thunder was no longer a distant rolling explosion.
"So much for the weather report, Mary Ann." The wind was whipping the rain into sheets, and he turned up his collar. "Come on, hop aboard-I'll give you a ride back to the shed."
She clipped a handful of green sprouts and stuffed them into her blouse pocket. She hunched her shoulders and clopped through the broken ground, climbed up behind him on the tractor and wrapped her arms around him. He felt her shiver as her breasts pressed into his back.
He said, "We'll just have to have Town Meeting early. Good. I want that damned current turned back on. I'm sick of hearing about how I'm overreacting." He lifted the digging tool from the ground and headed back toward Civic Center.
She squeezed him tight, in a special rolling way that she had. It took the edge off his ire, but he grumbled on. "Well, it sure as hell isn't the power. We've got all the power we need, rain or shine."
"Everybody says it's a lot of trouble just to stop a dog."
"Right. A dog." He sighed. "All right. They're entitled to their opinion. I'm entitled to mine."
Her voice was muffled against his back. "You're not alone. You have me, too. But we're just two."
The rain was still fairly light as he drove the tractor into the shed. The other farming equipment was being brought in, and the colonists were beginning to gather, heading for the meeting hall. Cadmann shut down the tractor and squeezed water from his hair.
"I'll be in in a minute," she called, hopping down from the back of the tractor. She paused at the doorway to turn up her collar, then ran out in the direction of the corral.
Maybe Mary Ann was right. His was a minority opinion. Madman Weyland sees bogeymen in every corner-while crops grow, animals thrive and tame earthworms enrich the soil with their bodies and their wastes.
When he thought of these things, he should have thought of life, instead of a dog that had never come back, and a mangled chicken cage . . .

It loved a rainy night.
It could always move about on land, slowly, lazily, and tolerate the heat for hours at a time; but movement at hunting speed required a quick kill, then a frantic race to the river to shed the terrible heat within. Night and rain extended its time on dry land.
It had changed when it became an adult. Its mind and senses adapted for life out of water; but from birth it had been intensely curious. Frustratingly, there had been nothing for its curiosity to chew on. Birds and swimmers were its world, a prison for its starved senses, until the intruders introduced it to the world beyond the rock wall.
They were so strange! They built angular nests. They tottered on their hind legs or attached themselves to creatures with hard, weirdly scented, tasteless shells. Sometimes they would let themselves be swallowed up by them, much like swimmers would. They lived with creatures even stranger than themselves.
On the first night it had killed a four-legged thing. The dog had run after it rather than fleeing. It had played with the dog, dancing around it and watching its antics. When the game grew tiresome, it tore out the animal's throat. The blood was thick and hot and delicious.
Afterward it had felt overheated. It had hooked its tail spines into the dog's throat and dragged the corpse back toward the river, where it could cool itself and eat at leisure.
Sport! Swimmers were never such fun. The flying things that sometimes fed on them were too much of a challenge. It thought about that night, and pleasure rippled through its body.
There had been another night when it broke through prickly barriers, following a tantalizing scent.
The nest of wood and thin tough vine had resisted only for a moment, and then it was among them, one thick paw and its wedgelike head squeezed into the box. What noise they had made! They had tried to fly, but badly. None were fast, none could fight. It was not even sport. It was only feeding . . . but feeding was its own reward, and anything that didn't taste like a swimmer was food for thought.