"Kevin J Anderson - Scientific Romance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Kevin J)

would. The professor had spent his life as a proponent of Darwinism, had
debated buffoons and ill-educated orators in so many forums that Huxley
became infamous as 'Darwin's Bulldog.'
Another shooting star passed overhead, as if to emphasize Wells's point.
"Martians," Huxley said with a wry smile. "Interesting. And what do you
suppose a Martian would look like?"
Wells folded one leg over the other, in spite of his precarious rooftop
position, and restrained himself from answering instantly. Huxley did not
suffer foolish or glib answers. "I would suppose that since the Martians
are a much more ancient race, they would have minds immeasurably superior
to our own. Their bodies would be composed almost entirely of brain."
Two more faint Leonid meteors danced overhead unnoticed. Wells uncrossed
and recrossed his legs.
"And what would such beings look like?"
Wells frowned, letting his thoughts flow. "Natural selection would
ultimately shape a superior being into a creature with a huge head and
eyes. He would have delicate hands, tentacles perhaps, for manipulating
tools--but his mentality would be his greatest tool."
"An interesting exercise, Wells. You have quite an imagination." Huxley
leaned forward from his cramped position against the gable, scooting
across the roof tiles so that he could speak in a low, hoarse voice to his
protйgй. "But why would Martians want to come to our green Earth? What is
their motive?"
Wells was ready for that one. "Mars is a dry planet, cold and drained of
resources. Our world is younger, fresher, more vibrant--filled with all
the things they have lost over the course of their evolution. Perhaps even
now the Martians are regarding this Earth with envious eyes. They might
even be drawing up plans for invasion."
As a boy, Wells had studied military history, staging mock battles in the
park and observing the movements of one historical army against another.
But an interplanetary war was beyond his comprehension.
"A war of the worlds?" Huxley actually chuckled at this. "And you believe
that such superior minds as you propose would engage in an exercise as
trivial as military conquest? You must not consider them so evolved after
all."
Wells kept his thoughts to himself, for he had suddenly realized that
perhaps Thomas H. Huxley was a bit naive himself.
In his life, Wells had seen the gross divisions of the upper and lower
classes and how each fought amongst the others for dominance. His
hard-working, sweet mother had sent him off to be apprenticed to a draper,
where he had labored as a virtual slave. After escaping that fate through
his own calculated incompetence, Wells had lived with his mother where she
was the head domestic servant in a large manor, and she had commanded the
workers beneath her. His angry father had once been a gardener, but for
years had found no better employment than occasional cricket playing....
The hierarchy remained, no matter what their social standing, powerful and
powerless. It proved to Wells's satisfaction the Darwinian basis that all
humans had been predators at some time in the past.
Wells answered his professor carefully. "If the Martians are a dying
race," he said, "it would be survival of the fittest. The Martians would