"Joanna Russ - When It Changed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russ Joanna)

I translated again and watched the faces around the room; Lydia embarrassed
(as usual), Spet narrowing her eyes with some damned scheme, Katy very pale.

"This is Whileaway," I said.

He continued to look unenlightened.

"Whileaway," I said. "Do you remember? Do you have records? There was a plague
on Whileaway."

He looked moderately interested. Heads turned in the back of the room, and I
caught a glimpse of the local professions-parliament delegate; by morning
every town meeting, every district caucus, would be in full session.

"Plague?" he said. "That's most unfortunate."

"Yes," I said. "Most unfortunate. We lost half our population in one
generation."
He looked properly impressed.

"Whileaway was lucky," I said. "We had a big initial gene pool, we had been
chosen for extreme intelligence, we had a high technology and a large
remaining population in which every adult was two-or-three experts in one. The
soil is good. The climate is blessedly easy. There are thirty millions of us
now. Things are beginning to snowball in industryтАФdo you understand?тАФgive us
seventy years and we'll have more than one real city, more than a few
industrial centers, full-time professions, full-time radio operators,
full-time machinists, give us seventy years and not everyone will have to
spend three quarters of a lifetime on the farm." And I tried to explain how
hard it is when artists can practice full-time only in old age, when there are
so few, so very few who can be free, like Katy and myself. I tried also to
outline our government, the two houses, the one by professions and the
geographic one; I told him the district caucuses handled problems too big for
the individual towns. And that population control was not a political issue,
not yet, though give us time and it would be. This was a delicate point in our
history; give us time. There was no need to sacrifice the quality of life for
an insane rush into industrialization. Let us go our own pace. Give us time.

"Where are all the people?" said the monomaniac.

I realized then that he did not mean people, he meant men, and he was giving
the word the meaning it had not had on Whileaway for six centuries.

"They died," I said. "Thirty generations ago."

I thought we had poleaxed him. He caught his breath. He made as if to get out
of the chair he was sitting in; he put his hand to his chest; he looked around
at us with the strangest blend of awe and sentimental tenderness. Then he
said, solemnly and earnestly: