"Bruce Holland Rogers - Big Far Now" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

Murmurs around the room.
Meeker rapped on the table with his knuckles. I could see he regretted not having a gavel.
"Hold on," he said when he had our attention. "Dr. Carpaccio, I don't believe I heard a word of
religion in your little animal's speech."
"I don't think 'animal' is quite the right term to apply to a Shy," Joanna said. "And you heard the whole
of Shy cosmology just now. 'Sky Mountain all,' Mowza told us. Sky Mountain is everything, a totemic
god. He told us that if Sky Mountain ceases to exist, then so will he and the lightning dogs and everything
else alive. If the Mountain is gone, he'll curl up and go far far. That's how the Shies talk about death."
 "What was all that business about Mowza close now, far now?" I asked.
"I don't know," Joanna said. "He's been telling me all of that for several weeks, but I can't make sense
of it. It seems like he's saying that the other bigs and I are close all the time, but that he is close
sometimes and far away sometimes, or that he is close and far away at the same time. I know it doesn't
make sense. I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure it out. Mowza keeps telling me about it over
and over. It's as though he understands a concept that's more elaborate than he knows how to express."
"How about that bit about, 'Mowza close now, big far now'?" I said. "We're in the same room with
him, but he says that he's close and we're far?"
Joanna shrugged. "Maybe it has nothing to do with distance. Mowza makes analogies. He can't
remember the word for 'fist,' so he says 'fruit' instead, I guess because they're the same size and shape.
So he might not mean 'near' or 'far' at all. I wish he could learn a more elaborate vocabulary, but Shies
top out at about a hundred words."
"These little guys are smarter than you first thought," I said.
"Yes," Joanna said. "Mowza may have a limited vocabulary, but I think that he managed to express the
thought that Sky Mountain is at the heart of Shy belief. Mining the mountain would be like digging for
gold under a cathedral."
Murmurs again, and Meeker rapped once more on the table. "Dr. Carpaccio," he said, "are you
seriously asking us to jeopardize the success of this colony for the sake of a little monkey prophet?"
Laughter again. Joanna took it well.
"Not jeopardize. Delay." She gestured like a lawyer with her hands. "Look," she said, "we all left Earth
because the place is a mess. It's a mess because we didn't respect it, and we didn't respect those who
did respect it. If we had thought of the planet as something sacred, we might have taken better care of
it."
Meeker nodded, "Yes," he said, "we've learned that lesson. All of the colonies have environmental
protocols to follow."
"For the protection of the biota," Joanna said. "Not for the good of any intelligent species we happen
to encounter. There isn't a protocol for that."
"What's this about?" Meeker said. "You want to protect the religious beliefs of some talking animals?"
Not everyone laughed at that one. I didn't.
"I want to try," Joanna said. "I want us to delay mining the mountain until we've exhausted our other
options. Or for just two years, say, out of respect to our Shy neighbors."
Now everybody was talking. "Two years?" someone near me was saying. "But if we mine now, we
can be free and clear in a year."
"I don't know," I heard from someone else. "It sounds reasonable to me."
Meeker was rapping on the table again, and then he pounded with his fist. "Attention!" he demanded.
He stood up. "Attention!"
The conversation petered out.
"People," he said, "I don't know about you, but I don't want to go home. Some nights I can't sleep
because I'm worried, worried about the future of this colony."
There were murmurs of agreement.
"Now, we know we have a chance to end our anxieties. We can dig for gold and gallium in Mount
Meeker. But frankly, I won't start sleeping well until the first shipment of metal is receipted for and on its