"David Brin - Temptation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

for in this gentle place, while their shipmates sped on to new crises elsewhere.
She could hear them now, browsing along the same fishy swarm just a hundred meters off.
Thirty neo-dolphins who had once graduated from prestigious universities. Specialists chosen
for an elite expedition -- now reduced to splashing and squalling, with little on their minds but
food, sex, and music. Their primitive calls no longer embarrassed Makanee. After everything
her colleagues had gone through since departing Terra -- on a routine one-year survey
voyage that instead stretched into a hellish three -- it was surprising they had any sanity left
at all.
Such suffering would wear down a human, or even a tymbrimi. But our race is just a few
centuries old. Neo-dolphins have barely started the long Road of Uplift. Our grip on sapience
is still slippery.
And now another trail beckons us.
After debarking with her patients, Makanee had learned about the local religion of the Six
Races who already secretly settled this isolated world, a creed centered on the Path of
Redemption -- a belief that salvation could be found in blissful ignorance and non-sapience.
It was harder than it sounded. Among the "sooner" races who had come to this world
illegally, seeking refuge in simplicity, only one had succeeded so far, and Makanee doubted
that the human settlers would ever reclaim true animal innocence, no matter how hard they
tried. Unlike species who were uplifted, humans had earned their intelligence the hard way on
Old Earth, seizing each new talent or insight at frightful cost over the course of a thousand
harsh millennia. They might become ignorant and primitive -- but never simple. Never
innocent.
We neo-dolphins will find it easy, however. We've only been tool-users for such a short
time -- a boon from our human patrons that we never sought. It's simple to give up
something you received without struggle. Especially when the alternative -- the Whale Dream
-- calls seductively, each time you sleep.
An alluring sanctuary. The sweet trap of timelessness.
From clackety sonar emanations, she sensed her assistants -- a pair of fully conscious
volunteers -- keeping herd on the reverted ones, making sure the group stayed together.
Things seemed pleasant here, but no one knew for sure what dangers lurked in Jijo's wide
sea.
We already have three wanderers out there somewhere. Poor little Peepoe and her two
wretched kidnappers. I promised Kaa we'd send out search parties to rescue her. But how?
Zhaki and Mopol have a huge head start, and half a planet to hide in.
Tkett's out there looking for her right now, and we'll start expanding the search as soon
as the patients are settled and safe. But they could be on the other side of Jijo by now. Our
only real hope is for Peepoe to escape that pair of dolts somehow, and get close enough to
call for help.
It was time for Makanee and Brookida to head back and take their own turn shepherding
the happy-innocent patients. Yet, she felt reluctant. Nervous.
Something in the water rolled through her mouth with a faint metallic tang, tasting like
expectancy.
Makanee swung her sound-sensitive jaw around, seeking clues. At last she found a distant
tremor. A faintly familiar resonance, coming from the west.
Brookida hadn't noticed yet.
"Well," he commented. "It won't be long until we are truly part of this world, I suppose. A
few generations from now, none of our descendants will be using Anglic, or any Galactic
language. We'll be guileless innocents once more, ripe for re-adoption and a second chance at
uplift. I wonder what our new patrons will be like."
Makanee's friend was goading her gently with the bitter-sweet destiny anticipated for this