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

"Radio? We've had excellent receiving sets ever since human beings invented it.
Obviously we mustn't broadcast, but we hear it. Have you forgotten your history? Radio
was known on Salvay, one of the little techniques our ancestors abandoned тАФ from lack
of important need, I suppose тАФ during the first miserable centuries in this wilderness.
Don't you ever think of ancient times, Namir? The shock, loneliness, no hope of return
even if Salvay had not been a dying planet тАФ except to the Amurai, I suppose. They
could wall themselves in, accept the underground life that we rejected. And then we had
to accept it here after all! Think of the ordeal of adaptation too. History says it was two
hundred years before the first successful births, and even then the mothers usually died.
What an age of trial!"

"History is a dead language."

"Can't agree. Well, our mathematicians study the human broadcasts. Over my head, the
mathematics, but I'm sure radio's immensely useful."

"Immensely emetic. While we wait for your big-time operator, would you care for a word
of advice?"
"Certainly. Television too тАФ damn it, I love television. You were about to say?"

"On my way here, I passed six settlements in northern Manitoba and Keewatin District,
all new since the last time I was near there, in 30,920. The icecap goes faster all the
time. You're losing the Arctic shield. No concern of mine but I thought I'd mention it."

"Thanks. Our Observers watch it. The waterlock will be finished before we need to close
the land entrance. And did you know that the human plastics industry is almost ready
with greenhouse dwellings, size limited only by convenience? In a few decades there'll be
garden villages all through the Arctic, independent of climate, and in a century the
population of Canada will probably match that of the States тАФ if they're still technically
separate countries by that time. Personally I'm pleased about it. Come in, Elmis."

Elmis was long-legged, slim, powerful, his complexion close to that colorful pallor
human beings call white. From his agony of surgery long ago, his face and hands were
properly human. The brown-haired scalp and artificial fifth fingers had been
almost-normal parts of him for over two hundred years. If he had to show himself
barefoot, the four-toed feet would pass for a human anomaly. Drozma explained: "I'm
sorry to call you from the work you prefer, Elmis. I know you'd hoped never to go out as
an Observer again. But you're much better qualified than anyone else available, so I can't
help myself. This is Namir the Abdicator."

Elmis' manlike voice said in English: "I think I remember you." Namir nodded
inattentively. "You've returned to us?"

"What an idea! No, just passing by, and I must be on my way. A pleasure. By the way,
Drozma тАФ care to put up some little consideration to make that bet interesting? Say, a
human soul?"

"Why, assuming anyone could dispose of a human soul тАФ "

"Sorry. For a minute there I thought you wanted to play God." He squirmed into his