"Pohl, Frederik - Rem The Rememberer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pohl Frederick)

Then he would go home and meet his father, bicycling back from the Sands Point
railroad station. If the weather was nice they'd dig in the garden or toss a
ball around. Then they would have dinner-wherever they were having dinner that
night; they rotated around from home to home most nights of the week so that
each family had the job of cooking and cleaning up only two or three times a
week. One of the grownups usually helped the children with their homework after
dinner. Rem liked it when it was his father's turn, particularly when the
homework assignment was about ecology. He was always popping up with questions.
Don't hog the floor, son, his father would say. "Give the others a chance.
"It's always the same dumb questions, too, his cousin, Grace, complained. She
was eight, still pretty much a brat. " Why don't we get sick from eating
sewage?' What a dumb question!
His father laughed. "Well, it's not all that dumb. The thing is, we don't eat
sewage. We just use it to grow things. All the New York City sewage goes into
the settling ponds and then the algae tanks. Who knows what algae is?
Rem knew the answer, of course, but he was polite enough to let one of the
younger ones answer. Even Grace. "What they make bread out of, she said.
"That's one thing algae is used for, yes. But most of the algae is piped into
Long Island Sound. The mussels live on it. So do the fish, but the mussels are
the big crop. We grow three-quarters of the protein for the whole United States
here, just on that algae. And, of course, on the waste heat from the power
generators around Hell Gate. That warms up the Sound so the mussels grow all
year round.
"And so do the potatoes, Grace crowed.
Rem's father said, "Yes, they do. That's a little different, though. They take
the sludge from the algae tanks and spread it over the fields along the Island.
Did you know they used to be covered with houses? Well, we got rid of the
houses, and we began growing the best potatoes in the world there, again. But we
use some of the warm water piped underground to keep the soil warm, and we get
two crops a year.
Then Rem asked another question, always the same one or one like it: "But, he
persisted, "aren't those bad things, sewage and sludge and all?
"People used to think so. Then we learned that some bad things are actually good
things, in the wrong place.
"How did we learn?
His father looked at his watch. "That happened almost a hundred years ago. The
people who lived then made some very good decisions.
Grace said indignantly, "They did bad things.
"In a way, but then they did better ones. We all know about the bad things. They
drove around in cars that burned gasoline! They dumped sewage in the ocean, and
ruined it for fifty years all up and down the coast. They used radioactive
materials that poisoned places forever, just because they wanted more and more
electric thises and automatic thats. But then they realized they were being too
greedy. They learned-what did they learn?
All the kids chanted, "Use it over! Put it back!
"That's right. They learned not to waste things, and that decision made all the
difference in the world. They decided not to be greedy. And now, he said,
looking at his watch again, "it's time for everybody under the age of thirty-two
to go to bed. He looked around the room with a surprised expression. "Why,
that's all of you! Good night.