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

"Darwin's son Huxley had grown up in hidingтАФmost of the time in that abandoned mine. He
learned his father's crafts of creation and improved on them. When he escaped into space he
carried three new synthetic life-cells in cryogenic flasks: Alpha and Beta and Gamma.
 "Those names seem to have come from the symbols of some lost language. Huxley separated
the new beings for their own safety, arranging for proxy-mothers to bear them on three different
planets. Not really divine, not yet immortal, they were gifted enough. He called them his three
Valkyries, from the warrior women in some forgotten preman legend. When they were old
enough for battle, he sent them back to face the rebels.
"Though their powers were limited, they had been designed for battle. Withdrawing from
simple space at will, they were untouchable. They could levitate where they pleased, unstoppable.
With one flash of a nimbus, they could kill a preman leader or explode an arsenal. After two or
three encounters, the premen panicked.
"Huxley recalled his Valkyries to space, and the trumen tried to restore the world republic. For
reasons they couldn't understand, the effort failed. Defeat had changed the premen. They refused
to trust anybody, or to accept any aid, or even to help themselves. As Eva saw it, they had
suffered an emotional wound that never healed. And I guess that's the way Redrock began."
Buglet wrinkled her nose at the sewer stink drifting between the yellow containers.
"The two cultures grew apart as the centuries went on, and the premen lost most of their own.
When the world state came back, it was a union of the spreading truman enclaves, with the
premen left out. I wonderтАФ"
Her breath caught, and her voice was again her own.
"I wonder if San Six is rightтАФif the premen really are the mongrel stepchildren of Creation.
Because they just gave up. They quit trying. In government. In science and art. In everything.
When the troubles ended, they still owned most of the planet. But they died of their own strife,
their own plagues, their own despair. Their numbers dwindled as the trumen grew. Again and
again they gave up land, till Redrock is their last bitтАФ"
"You and I are premen," Davey objected gravely. "Really, Bug, do you feel so inferior?"
Her yellow eyes blinked.
"I guess I was still thinking Eva Smithwick's thoughts." With a quick little smile, she reached
to touch his arm. "We're different, of course. We can't do what the stargods can. We aren't even
as sharp as San Seven in a good many ways. But we'reтАФourselves."
"We're just as goodтАФas good as anybody!" A gust of anger shook his voice, and he sat bleak
and silent till it had passed. "Go on, Bug." He bent toward her hopefully. "Is there anything about
the Multiman?"
"Maybe." She frowned at the yellow boxes. "It's like trying to fit the pieces of a broken pot
together when half of them are gone. I don't know what I know. I have to put the scraps of Eva's
memory into a language I can speak.
"But Huxley Smithwick had a daughterтАФ"
Absently combing at her hair, she forgot to go on.
Davey watched the monk's skimmer sail above them toward the dig on Creation Mesa and
listened to the hooves of a mule clopping along the trail.
"When the war was over, Huxley came back from space." She nodded to herself, as if to
confirm the recollection. "He built the laboratoryтАФthe exobiology labтАФwhere the old space
clinic had stood. There he created mates for his three Valkyries.
"The first of the stargods. True immortals, with keener senses to explore the multiverse and
greater powers to control it. The mumen had begun encountering advanced and sometimes hostile
alien cultures, and he thought they needed stronger champions than the Valkyries.
"In his old age, talking to his daughter, he confessed that the gods had been a blunder. Even at
the time he was aware of the danger, but he thought he was taking precautions enough. Like the
Valkyries, those first gods were implanted in the wombs of proxy-mothers, to be born and raised