"Robert Reed - The Hormone Jungle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION
Copyright (c) 1987 by Robert Reed
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in
part in any form.
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trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.
This Popular Library Edition is published by arrangement with Donald I. Fine,
Inc., 128 East 36th Street, New York, NY, 10016.

Cover art by Royo
Cover design by Don Puckey

Popular Library books are published by Warner Books, Inc. 666 Fifth Avenue New
York, N.Y. 10103
A Warner Communications Company
Printed in the United States of America First Popular Library Printing: June,
1989 10 987654321


To Natalie




The Hormone Jungle


1

I've been to Kross, our innermost world, and seen the sprawling strip mines
and the fantastic cities and the princes and princesses of Kross, the poorest
of them richer than a hundred of me. I've seen the high sulfurous clouds of
Morning and played poker with its cyborg inhabitants, listening to their human
laughter and their matter-of-fact stories about the wastelands below, cruel
and unforgiving. And of course I've been to the Earth, homeland to us all, and
to its sister world, Luna. And then there is Cradle, the first major world to
be terraformed, with its violet plant life and its tiny childlike people,
happy artists every last one. And there is the multitude of Belter worlds,
each unique. There are the worlds of Jupiter, sparse populations and fantastic
scenery ... I have reached clear to those far-flung bits of humanity in the
Oort Cloud and to some of the places set between the major places-those tiny
man-built worlds of Kross metals and Titan plastics-and people, knowing my
compulsion to travel, ask me which of those landscapes is the most beautiful.
The most intriguing. The most complex. The most rewarding. And always, always
I smile and look straight at them and explain, "There's only one landscape
that fits the bill. Only one." Which one? they persist, puzzled and eager and
smiling at me. "The human face," I say. "Of all the landscapes, without doubt,
I would claim the human face is easily the best. I would."
-excerpt from a
traveler's notebook, available through System-Net