"Edgar Pangborn - A Mirror for Observers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pangborn Edgar)

A Mirror for Observers

by
Edgar Pangborn
to John V. Padovano
Copyright 1954 by Edgar Pangborn. Published by arrangement with the author. Library
of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-5352. Cover illustration by Ark Wong,

ISBN: 0-380-00317-1
. . . But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; тАФ
because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high
matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom; and therefore I asked
myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their
knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to myself and
to the oracle that I was better off as I was.
тАФ PLATO, Apology
note: all characters in this novel are fictitious except possibly the Martians.
 prelude

The office of the Director of North American Missions is a blue-lit room in Northern City,
246 feet below the tundra of the Canadian Northwest Territory. There is still a land
entrance, as there has been for several thousand years, but it may have to be abandoned
this century if the climate continues to warm up. Behind a confusion of random boulders,
the entrance looks and smells like a decent bear den. Unless you are Salvayan тАФ or
Martian, to use the accepted human word тАФ you will not find,inside that den, the pivoted
rock that conceals an elevator. Nowadays the lock is electronic, responding only to the
correct Salvayan words, and we change the formula from time to time.

The Abdicator Namir had not been aware of that innovation. He was obliged to wait
shivering a few days in that replica of a bear den, his temper deteriorating, until a
legitimate resident, returning from a mission, met him and escorted him with the usual
courtesies to the office of the Director, who asked: "Why are you here?"

"Safe-conduct, by the law of 27,140," said Namir the Abdicator.

"Yes," said Director Drozma, and rang for refreshments. A century ago Drozma would
have fetched the fermented mushroom drink himself, but he was painfully old now,
painfully fat with age, entitled to certain services. He had lived more than six hundred
years, as few Martians do. His birthdate was the year 1327 by the Western human
calendar, the same year that saw the death of Edward II of England, who went up
against Robert Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314 and didn't come off too bloody well. In
Drozma's web of wrinkles were scars from the surgery which, about five hundred years
ago, had made his face presentably human. His first mission into human society had
been in 1471 (30,471), when he achieved the status of qualified Observer during the
wars of York and Lancaster; later he made a study of three South American tribes even
now unknown to human anthropology; in 30,854 he completed the history of the
Tasmanians, which is still the recognized Martian text. His missions were far behind him.
He would never again leave this office until it was time to die. He was not only Director
of Missions, but also Counselor of Northern City, answerable to its few hundred citizens
and, after them, to the Upper Council in Old City in Africa. He carried the honor lightly,