"Jack Williamson - Brother to Demons, Brother to Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

containers for the effects of the premen, waiting to be packed for the long star-flight to
Andoranda V. She led him back among them, off the trail.
"Last night I hadтАФ I guess it was a dream."
Her eyes were lemon-colored in the reflected light from the containers. She stood peering into
the empty sky above them, as if searching for something she couldn't quite make out.
"But it was real, Davey. Real as anything! It didn't fade when I woke up, the way dreams do."
Her troubled eyes came back to him. "Yet it's hard to talk about. Because I was somebody else.
The places and people and ideasтАФthey're all so new."
Shivering, she caught his hands.
"I'm getting a headache just trying to remember."
 He didn't beg her to tell about it; they understood each other too well for that. Instead, he
beckoned her farther away from the trail, and they sat face to face on two empty containers.
Eagerly, he waited.
"It's like a memory, though it never happened to me. In it, I'm Eva тАФEva Smithwick." She
was hesitant, groping. "The last of the Creators. But the Creation wasn't the instant miracle they
talk about in church. It took hundreds of people working for hundreds of years."
She stopped to think again, unconsciously combing a black-shining sheaf of her hair with slim
white fingers.
"The real CreatorsтАФthe leadersтАФall belonged to one great family. Adam Smithwick and his
descendants. I believeтАФEva believed that the family itself had been the actual first creation."
Leaning closer, he caught the faint sweet exciting scent of her hair.
"You can't guess how hard it is." Her tawny eyes flashed him a wry little smile. "It's all
terribly real. So plain I'll never forget. But when I try to talk about it, the words aren't there. Even
the language Eva spoke wasn't yet our Terran. After all, I'm still me."
"I'm glad."
With only a grave, pleased nod, she went on searching out the words that rang so strange
when she spoke them. "The first actual Creators must have been Adam's parents. They had been
geneticists, working to control mutations in lab animals and then in human beings by
micromanipulation of the chromosomesтАФ"
She saw his puzzled expression and paused to think again.
"They had been working with the genetic code, trying to revise the blueprint for a new body
and a new mind carried by the germ-cell from parents to child."
"I can understand that," he said. "From exobiology class."'
"Adam's parents had both been in trouble. His father had to leave a country called England
when people learned about his experiments with humans. I guess they were already afraid of
what he might create."
Gazing at the yellow containers, Davey nodded somewhat grimly.
"His mother was a refugee from what was called a labor camp in another country. She had
been sent there because she wouldn't work in a secret genetic project to grow military clones.
Adam was born in Japan. He grew up to be the best geneticist anywhere.
"The reason was, his own genes had been improved. Anyhow, that's what Eva thought. She
must have been his great-granddaughter." Buglet stopped again, frowning with effort, twisting
the strands of bright black hair. "Sorry, Davey. It's all in broken bits. I need time to fit them
togetherтАФand we're already late for school."
"Forget school."
She sat very still for a while, her searching eyes fixed on things beyond the yellow boxes and
the dusty sky. "AdamтАФ" She brightened again, remembering. "Adam came to North America to
be the first director of a new space clinic. Men were exploring the planets by then, and he was
already the greatest specialist in space medicine.
"Secretly, he was already creating the trumen. I guess he had learned from the misfortunes of