"Cordwainer Smith - On The Gem Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Cordwainer)

ON THE GEM PLANET By Cordwainer Smith
CONSIDER the horse. He climbed up through the crevasses of a cliff of gems; the force which drove him was the love of man.
Consider Mizzer, the resort planet, where the dictator Colonel Wedder reformed the culture so violently that whatever had been slovenly now became atrocious.
Consider Genevieve, so rich that she was the prisoner of her own wealth, so beautiful that she was the victim of her own beauty, so intelligent that she knew there was nothing, nothing to be done about her fate.
Consider Casher O'Neill, a wanderer among the planets, thirsting for justice and yet hoping in his innermost thoughts that 'justice' was not just another word for revenge.
Consider Pontoppidan, that literal gem of a planet, where the people were too rich and busy to have good food, open air or much fun. All they had was diamonds, rubies, tourmalines and emeralds.
Add these together and you have one of the strangest stories ever told from world to world.
When Casher O'Neill came to Pontoppidan, he found that the capital city was appropriately called Andersen.
This was the second century of the Rediscovery of Man. People everywhere had taken up old names, old languages, old customs, as fast as the robots and the underpeople could retrieve the data from the rubbish of "forgotten starlanes or the subsurface ruins of Manhome itself.
Casher knew this very well, to his bitter cost. Re-acculturation had brought him revolution and exile. He came from the
dry, beautiful planet of Mizzer. He was himself the nephew of the ruined ex-ruler, Kuraf, whose collection of objectionable books had at one time been unmatched in the settled galaxy; he had stood aside, half-assenting, when the colonels Gibna and Wedder took over the planet in the name of reform; he had implored the Instrumentality, vainly, for help when Wedder became a tyrant; and now he travelled among the stars, looking for men or weapons who might destroy Wedder and make Kaheer again the luxurious, happy city which it once had been.
He felt that his cause was hopeless when he landed on Pontoppidan. The people were warmhearted, friendly, intelligent, but they had no motives to fight for, no weapons to fight with, no enemies to fight against. They had little public spirit, such as Casher O'Neill had seen back on his native planet of Mizzer. They were concerned about little things.
Indeed, at the time of his arrival, the Pontoppidans were wildly excited about a horse.
A horse! Who worries about one horse? Casher O'Neill himself said so. 'Why bother about a horse? We have lots of them on Mizzer. They are four-handed beings, eighty1 times the weight of a man, with only one finger on each of the four hands. The fingernail is very heavy and permits them to run fast. That's why our people have them, for running.'
'Why run?' said the Hereditary Dictator of Pontoppidan. 'Why run, when you can fly? Don't you have ornithopters?'
'We don't run with them,' said Casher indignantly. 'We make them run against each other and then we pay prizes to the one which runs fastest.'
'But then,' said Philip Vincent, the Hereditary Dictator, 'you get a very illogical situation. When you have tried out these four-fingered beings, you know how fast each one goes. So what? Why bother?'
His niece interrupted. She was a fragile little thing, smaller than Casher O'Neill liked women to be. She had clear grey eyes, well-marked eyebrows, a very artificial coiffeur of silver-blonde hair and the most sensitive little mouth he had ever seen. She conformed to the local fashion by wearing some
kind of powder or face cream which was flesh-pink in colour but which had overtones of lilac. On a woman as old as twenty-two, such a coloration would have made the wearer look like an old hag, but on Genevieve it was pleasant, if rather startling. It gave the effect of a happy child playing grown-up and doing the job joyfully and well. Casher knew that it was hard to tell ages in these off-trail planets. Genevieve might be a grand dame in her third or fourth rejuvenation!
He doubted it, on second glance. What she Said was sensible, young, and pert: ' *Х
'But uncle, they're animals I'
' I know that,' he rumbled.
'But uncle, don't you see it?'
'Stop saying "but uncle" and tell me what you mean,' growled the Dictator^ very fondly.
'Animals are always uncertain.'
'Of course,' said the uncle.
'That makes it a game, uncle,' said Genevieve. 'They're never sure that any one of them would do the same thing twice. Imagine the excitement - the beautiful big beings from earth running around and around on their four middle fingers, the big fingernails making the gems jump loose from the ground!' -
'I'm not at all sure it's that way. Besides, Mizzer may be covered with something valuable, such as earth or sand, instead of gemstones like the ones we have here on Pontoppidan. You know your flower-pots with their rich, warm, wet, soft earth?'
'Of course I do, uncle. And I know what you paid for them. You were very generous. And still are,' she added diplomatic-wily, glancing quickly at Casher O'Neill to see how the familial piety went across with the visitor.
'We're not that rich on Mizzer. It's mostly sand, with farmland along the Twelve Niles, our big rivers.'
'I've seen pictures of rivers,' said Genevieve. 'Imagine living on a whole world full of flowerpot stuff!'
'You're getting off the subject, darling. We were wondering why anyone would bring one horse, just one horse, to Pontoppidan. I suppose you could race a horse against
himself, if you had a stop-watch. But would it be fun? Would you do that, young man ?'
Casher O'Neill tried to be respectful. 'In my home we used to have a lot of horses. I've seen my uncle time them one by one.'
'Your uncle?' said the Dictator interestedly. 'Who was your uncle that he had all these four-fingered "horses" running around? They're all Earth animals and very expensive.'
Casher felt the coming of the low, slow blow he had met so many times before, right from the whole outside world into the pit of his stomach. 'My uncle' - he stammered - 'my uncle - I thought you knew - was the old Dictator of Mizzer, Kuraf.'
Philip Vincent jumped to his feet, very lightly for so well-fleshed a man. The young mistress, Genevieve, clutched at the throat of her dress.
'Kuraf!' cried the old Dictator. 'Kuraf! We know about him, even here. But you were supposed to be a Mizzer patriot, not one of Kuraf's people.'
'He doesn't have any children Ч' Casher began to explain.
'I'should think not, not with those habits!' snapped the old man.
'- so I'm his nephew and his heir. But I'm not trying to put the Dictatorship back, even though I should be dictator. I just want to get rid of Colonel Wedder. He has ruined my people, and I am looking for money or weapons or help to make my home-world free.' This was the point, Casher O'Neill knew, at which people either started believing him or did not. If they did not, there was not much he could do about it. If they did, he was sure to get some sympathy. So far, no help. Just sympathy.
But the Instrumentality, while refusing to take action against Colonel Wedder, had given young Casher O'Niell an all-world travel pass - something which a hundred lifetimes of savings could not have purchased for the ordinary man. (His obscene old uncle had gone off to Sunvale, on Triolle, the resort planet, to live out his years between the casino and the beach.) Casher O'Neill held the conscience of Mizzer in his
hand. Only he, among the star travellers, cared enough to fight for the freedom of the Twelve Niles. Here, now, in this room, there was a turning point.
'I won't give you anything,' said the Hereditary Dictator, but he said it in a friendly voice. His niece started tugging at his sleeve.
The older man went on. ' Stop it, girl. I won't give you anything, not if you're part of that rotten lot of Kuraf's, not unless Ч'
'Anything, sir, anything, just so that I get help or weapons to go home to the Twelve Niles!'
'All right, then. Unless you open your mind to me. I'm a good telepath myself.'
'Open my mind! Whatever for?' The incongruous indecency of it shocked Casher O'Neill. He'd had men and women and governments ask a lot of strange things from him, but no one before had had the cold impudence to ask him to open his mind. 'And why you?' he went on. 'What would you get out of it? There's nothing much in my mind.'
'To make sure,' said the Hereditary Dictator, 'that you are not too honest and sharp in your beliefs. If you're positive that you know what to do, you might be another Colonel Wedder, putting your people through a dozen torments for a Utopia which never quite comes true. If you don't care at all, you might be like your uncle. He did no real harm. He just stole his planet blind and he had some extraordinary habits which got him talked about between the stars. He never killed a man in his life, did he ?'
'No, sir,' said Casher O'Neill, 'he never did.' It relieved him to tell the one little good thing about his uncle; there was so very, very little which could be said in Kuraf's favour.