"Emil Petaja - Tramontane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Petaja Emil)

caution, saw no reason for it. Niin. They are embarrassed by the name
Terra because they have forsaken their original Mother for many
thousands of mechanical mothers. They drained it dry, then they left it to
die like a raped maiden.тАЭ

A log snapped on the fire. Showers of red embers flashed up into the
mouth between the fire-dogs. Kullervo thought of the flashing fleets of
Motherships after one of the great galactic Conclaves, the busy-busy rush
of the mechanical mothers off on their duties among the Ussi colonies. He
had seen these things, marveling without knowing he did because it was
second nature to him, like breathing. The idea of these starflung beings
tied down to one small world was nothing less than incredible now. It
made even Kullervo feel uncomfortable, shackled.

He thought about the times when, a timid ugly boy, he had crawled
among the thrumming waste-obliterators because the sight of all that
blackness outside the ports, all those flint-white stars, frightened some
deep genetic memory within his being. There was comfort, solace, in
huddling there among the warm machines. The sky was so open, so big, so
immense, so without end. It promised, yet it was ruthless.

How would it be to live on some small green planet of pine trees and
soft flowers? To feel the heart of the planet beating under you? To scent
the rich warm loam, see the eager thrust of new buds coming out of it in
the spring? From deep, deep within him his cells cried out for such a
mother.
 This was a rare new process for Kullervo Kasi.

He could yearn. He could hope.

Never before had he been permitted the luxury of wishing for
something he did not have or being what he was not. He was too ugly, too
brute, too nothing.

Now, staring into the fire, listening to the starwitchтАЩs contemptuous
resum├й of ManтАЩs plunge into the stars and forever, at the last, away from
his small green mother-world, Kullervo sensed the rarest of rare dreams
moving up within him.

He shivered, suddenly caught by a chill spacial wind. No. No use. It
couldnтАЩt happen. Nothing good could ever happen to Kullervo. He was an
inter-dimensional sport. A mistake. All life forms here must despise him;
they couldnтАЩt help themselves. He must wander the starwastes forever
alone, never touching beauty or joy.




IV