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

his parents, because he kept the secret well. He arranged for the trumen to be accepted as the
normal children of his wivesтАФhe was married three times in allтАФand children of his friends and
associates.
"They looked like premen, of course. They were simply better. Stronger and smarter. Immune
to all the old diseases. Free of all the old genetic defects. Rid of all the animal jealousies and
aggressions that have always kept the premen in conflict with each other. Their social
adaptiveness kept them out of trouble. For a whole generation their existence wasn't suspected at
all."
She paused again to think.
"People like San Seven wouldn't be suspected," Davey murmured. "He's as normal as
anybody. Just brighter and nicer."
She hardly seemed to hear him.
"DarwinтАФDarwin Smithwick was the next Creator. Adam's last child and probably himself
another special creation. He made the mumen. Mutant creations shaped to meet all the different
challenges of space. With their new senses, the mumen began finding the first short cuts to other
star systems through the contact planes; up till then, the finite speed of light had limited
exploration."
Her lemon eyes smiled at something he couldn't see.
"To the premen of those days, the Creators themselves must have seemed like gods. They
were nearly immortal. Adam lived and worked a hundred years, Darwin even longer. Before he
died, the trumen were changing history. Never fully revealing themselvesтАФat first not even
aware they were a new speciesтАФthey had become the leaders in everything.
"War ceased, because the trumen saw that it was stupid. They dissolved the old contending
nations into a new world republic. They revised social systems to end crime and disorder. They
invented new sources of energy and food, found a new equilibrium with the environment. There
was a long age of peace and abundanceтАФtill the premen revolted.
"They had never knownтАФ"
Half a mile across the town the school bell had begun to ring. Buglet moved as if to slide off
her yellow perch, but Davey checked her with a gesture. Frowning in a way that charmed him,
she went on again, groping for the words she recited in a grave, slow voice that hardly seemed
her own.
"For a hundred years and more, the trumen had been the faithful public servants Adam
Smithwick wanted. Under them, the premen were better off than they had ever been. As Darwin
wrote in his journal, the world had become the paradise the old preman prophets and
philosophers had always dreamed about. Most of the premen must have understood that their new
leaders were too useful to be destroyed, because the rebellion was delayed a long time, even after
the truth was pretty well known.
"When it came, the civil war was savage. As illogical as always, the premen refused to see
that they had nothing at all to gain. Their own irrational leaders magnified the number and the
powers of the trumen. In a wave of insane panic, they overturned the world republic to revive the
old conflicting nations and parties and unions and classes. Trumen were mobbed and slaughtered.
War came back. Famine and disease and misrule.
"Yet through most of that dark age the premen seemed about to win. They had the numbers,
billions against a few tens of thousands. They had their old aptitude for senseless violence. They
seized or burned most of the cities. Trying to kill the Creators, they wrecked the space clinic.
Darwin Smithwick had to hide in an old copper mine.
"In the end, of course, the premen lost. Numbers meant nothing. Though the trumen had
surrendered most of the Earth, they found refuge in space. No fighters themselves, they brought
muman soldiers to defend their strongholds around the spaceports. And Huxley Smithwick made
the stargods.