"Resnick, Mike - A Little Knowledge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

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A Little Knowledge
by Mike Resnick
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Copyright (c)1994 by Mike Resnick
Hugo Award Nominee

Fictionwise Contemporary
Science Fiction


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THERE WAS a time when animals could speak.
Lions and zebras, elephants and leopards, birds and men all shared the earth. They labored side by side, they met and spoke of many things, they exchanged visits and gifts.
Then one day Ngai, who rules the universe from His throne atop Kirinyaga, which men now call Mount Kenya, summoned all of His creations to meet with Him.
"I have done everything I can to make life good for all My creatures," said Ngai. The assembled animals and men began to sing His praises, but Ngai held up His hand, and they immediately stopped.
"I have made life too good for you," He continued. "None among you has died for the past year."
"What is wrong with that?" asked the zebra.
"Just as you are constrained by your natures," said Ngai, "just as the elephant cannot fly and the impala cannot climb trees, so I cannot be dishonest. Since no one has died, I cannot feel compassion for you, and without compassion, I cannot water the savannah and the forest with my tears. And without water, the grasses and the trees will shrivel and die."
There was much moaning and wailing from the creatures, but again Ngai silenced them.
"I will tell you a story," He said, "and you must learn from it.
"Once there were two colonies of ants. One colony was very wise, and one colony was very foolish, and they lived next to each other. One day they received word that an aardvark, a creature that eats ants, was coming to their land. The foolish colony went about their business, hoping that the aardvark would ignore them and attack their neighbors. But the wise colony built a mound that could withstand even the efforts of an aardvark, and they gathered sugar and honey, and stockpiled it in the mound.
"When the aardvark reached the kingdom of the ants, he immediately attacked the wise ants, but the mound withstood his greatest efforts, and the ants within survived by eating their sugar and honey. Finally, after many fruitless days, the aardvark wandered over to the kingdom of the foolish ants, and dined well that evening."
Ngai fell silent, and none of His creatures dared ask Him to speak further. Instead, they returned to their homes and discussed His story, and made their preparations for the coming drought.
A year passed, and finally the men decided to sacrifice an innocent goat, and that very day Ngai's tears fell upon the parched and barren land. The next morning Ngai again summoned His creatures to the holy mountain.
"How have you fared during the past year?" He asked each of them.
"Very badly," moaned the elephant, who was very thin and weak. "We did as you instructed us, and built a mound, and gathered sugar and honey -- but we grew hot and uncomfortable within the mound, and there is not enough sugar and honey in all the world to feed a family of elephants."
"We have fared even worse," wailed the lion, who was even thinner, "for lions cannot eat sugar and honey at all, but must have meat."
And so it went, as each animal poured out its misery. Finally Ngai turned to the man and ask him the same question.
"We have fared very well," replied the man. "We built a container for water, and filled it before the drought came, and we stockpiled enough grain to last us to this day."
"I am very proud of you," said Ngai. "Of all my creatures, only you understood my story."
"It is not fair!" protested the other animals. "We built mounds and saved sugar and honey, as you told us to!"
"What I told you was a parable," said Ngai, "and you have mistaken the facts of it for the truth that lay beneath. I gave you the power to think, but since you have not used it, I hereby take it away. And as a further punishment, you will no longer have the ability to speak, for creatures that do not think have nothing to say."
And from that day forth, only man, among all Ngai's creations, has had the power to think and speak, for only man can pierce through the facts to find the truth.
* * * *
You think you know a person when you have worked with him and trained him and guided his thinking since he was a small boy. You think you can foresee his reactions to various situations. You think you know how his mind works.
And if the person in question has been chosen by you, selected from the mass of his companions and groomed for something special, as young Ndemi was selected and groomed by me to be my successor as the mundumugu -- the witch doctor -- to our terraformed world of Kirinyaga, the one thing you think above all else is that you possess his loyalty and his gratitude.
But even a mundumugu can be wrong.
I do not know exactly when or how it began. I had chosen Ndemi to be my assistant when he was still a kehee -- an uncircumcized child -- and I had worked diligently with him to prepare him for the position he would one day inherit from me. I chose him not for his boldness, though he feared nothing, nor for his enthusiasm, which was boundless, but rather for his intellect, for with the exception of one small girl, long since dead, he was by far the brightest of the children on Kirinyaga. And since we had emigrated to this world to create a Kikuyu paradise, far from the corrupt imitation of Europe that Kenya had become, it was imperative that the mundumugu be the wisest of men, for the mundumugu not only reads omens and casts spells, but is also the repository for the collected wisdom and culture of his tribe.
Day by day I added to Ndemi's limited storehouse of knowledge. I taught him how to make medicine from the bark and pods of the acacia tree, I showed him how to create the ointments that would ease the discomfort of the aged when the weather turned cold and wet, I made him memorize the hundred spells that were used to bless the scarecrows in the field. I told him a thousand parables, for the Kikuyu have a parable for every need and every occasion, and the wise mundumugu is the one who finds the right parable for each situation.
And finally, after he had served me faithfully for six long years, coming up my hill every morning, feeding my chickens and goats, lighting the fire in my boma, and filling my empty water gourds before his daily lessons began. I took him into my hut and showed him how my computer worked.
There are only four computers on all of Kirinyaga. The others belong to Koinnage, the paramount chief of our village, and to two chiefs of distant clans, but their computers can do nothing but send and receive messages. Only mine is tied into the data banks of the Eutopian Council, the ruling body that had given Kirinyaga its charter, for only the mundumugu has the strength and the vision to be exposed to European culture without becoming corrupted by it.
One of the primary purposes of my computer was to plot the orbital adjustments that would bring seasonal changes to Kirinyaga, so that the rains would come on schedule and the crops would flourish and the harvest would be successful. It was perhaps the mundumugu's most important obligation to his people, since it assured their survival. I spent many long days teaching Ndemi all the many intracacies of the computer, until he knew its workings as well as I myself did, and could speak to it with perfect ease.
The morning that I first noticed the change in him began like any other. I awoke, wrapped my blanket around my withered shoulders, and walked painfully out of my hut to sit by my fire until the warming rays of the sun took the chill from the air. And, as always, there was no fire.
Ndemi came up the path to my hill a few minutes later.