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

"They are incapable of making that choice," I said.
"If they are incapable of making that choice, it is only because you have hoarded knowledge to which they have as much right as you do."
"Think very carefully before you do this thing," I said. "Despite my love for you, if you do anything to harm Kirinyaga, I will crush you like an insect."
He smiled sadly. "For six years I have asked you to teach me how to turn my enemies into insects so that I may crush them. Is this how I am finally to learn?"
I could not help but return his smile. I had an urge to stand up and throw my arms around him and hug him, but such behavior is unacceptable in a mundumugu, so I merely looked at him for a long moment and then said, "Kwaheri, Ndemi. You were the best of them."
"I had the best teacher," he replied.
And with that, he turned and began the long walk toward Haven.
* * * *
The problems caused by Ndemi did not end with his departure.
Njoro dug a borehole near his hut, and when I explained that the Kikuyu did not dig boreholes but carried their water from the river, he replied that surely this borehole must be acceptable, for the idea came not from the Europeans but rather the Tswana people far to the south of Kenya.
I ordered the boreholes to be filled in. When Koinnage argued that there were crocodiles in the river and that he would not risk the lives of our women simply to maintain what he felt was a useless tradition, I had to threaten him with a powerful thahu, or curse -- that of impotency -- before he agreed.
Then there was Kidogo, who has named his firstborn Jomo, after Jomo Kenyatta, the Burning Spear. One day he announced that the boy was henceforth to be known as Johnstone, and I had to threaten him with banishment to another village before he relented. But even as he gave in, Mbura changed his own name to Johnstone and moved to a distant village even before I could order it.
Shima continued to tell anyone who would listen that I had forced Ndemi to leave Kirinyaga because he was occasionally late for his lessons, and Koinnage kept requesting a computer that was the equal of my own.
Finally, young Mdutu created his own version of a barbed-wire enclosure for his father's cattle, using woven grasses and thorns, making sure he wrapped them around the fenceposts. I had it torn down, and thereafter he always walked away when the other children circled around me to hear a story.
I began to feel like the Dutch boy in Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale. As quickly as I put my finger in the dike to staunch the flow of European ideas, they would break through in another place.
And then a strange thing happened. Certain ideas that were not European, that Ndemi could not possibly have transmitted to the members of the village, began cropping up on their own.
Kibo, the youngest of Koinnage's three wives, rendered the fat from a dead warthog and began burning it at night, creating Kirinyaga's first lamp. Ngobe, whose arm was not strong enough to throw a spear with any accuracy, devised a very primitive bow and arrow, the first Kikuyu ever to use such a weapon. Karenja created a wooden plow, so that his ox could drag it through the fields while his wives simply guided it, and soon all the other villagers were improvising plows and strangely-shaped digging tools. Indeed, alien ideas that had been dormant since the creation of Kirinyaga were now springing forth on all fronts. Ndemi's words had opened a Pandora's box, and I did not know how to close it.
I spent many long days sitting alone on my hill, staring down at the village and wondering if a Utopia can evolve and still remain a Utopia.
And the answer was always the same: Yes, but it will not be the same Utopia, and it was my sacred duty to keep Kirinyaga a Kikuyu Utopia.
When I was convinced that Ndemi was not going to return, I began going down to the village each day, trying to decide which of the children was the brightest and most forceful, for it would take both brilliance and force to deflect the alien ideas which were infecting our world and turning it into something it was never meant to be.
I spoke only to the boys, for no female may be a mundumugu. Some, like Mdutu, had already been corrupted by listening to Ndemi -- but those who had not been corrupted by Ndemi were even more hopeless, for a mind cannot open and close at will, and those who were unmoved by what he had to say were not bright enough for the tasks a mundumugu must perform.
I expanded my search to other villages, convinced that somewhere on Kirinyaga I would find the boy I sought, a boy who grasped the difference between facts, which merely informed, and parables, which not only informed but instructed. I needed a Homer, a Jesus, a Shakespeare, someone who could touch men's souls and gently guide them down the path that must be taken.
But the more I searched, the more I came to the realization that a Utopia does not lend itself to such tellers of tales. Kirinyaga seemed divided into two totally separate groups: those who were content with their lives and had no need to think, and those whose every thought led them farther and farther from the society we had labored to build. The unimaginative would never be capable of creating parables, and the imaginative would create their own parables, parables that would not reaffirm a belief in Kirinyaga and a distrust of alien ideas.
After some months I was finally forced to concede that, for whatever reason, there were no potential mundumugus waiting to be found and groomed. I began wondering if Ndemi had been truly unique, or if he would have eventually rejected my teachings even without exposure to the European influence of the computer. Was it possible that a true Utopia could not outlast the generation that founded it, that it was the nature of man to reject the values of the society into which he is born, even when those values are sacred?
Or was it just conceivable that Kirinyaga had never been a Utopia, that somehow we had deluded ourselves into believing that we could go back to a way of life that had forever vanished?
I considered that possibility for a long time, but eventually I rejected it, for if it were true, then the only logical conclusion was that it had vanished because the Europeans' values were more pleasing to Ngai than our own, and this I knew to be false.
No, if there was a truth anywhere in the universe, it was that Kirinyaga was exactly as it was meant to be -- and if Ngai felt obligated to test us by presenting us with these heresies, that would make our ultimate victory over the lies of the Europeans all the more sweet. If minds were worth anything, they were worth fighting for, and when Ndemi returned, armed with his facts and his data and his numbers, he would find me waiting for him.
It would be a lonely battle, I thought as I carried my empty water gourds down to the river, but having given His people a second chance to build their Utopia, Ngai would not allow us to fail. Let Ndemi tempt our people with his history and his passionless statistics. Ngai had His own weapon, the oldest and truest weapon He possessed, the weapon that had created Kirinyaga and kept it pure and intact despite all the many challenges it had encountered.
I looked into the water and studied the weapon critically. It appeared old and frail, but I could also see hidden reservoirs of strength, for although the future appeared bleak, it could not fail as long as it was used in Ngai's service. It stared back at me, bold and unblinking, secure in the rightness of its cause.
It was the face of Koriba, last storyteller among the Kikuyu, who stood ready to battle once again for the soul of his people.

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