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

debris from when this section of Galaxy Four had been a center of civilization and commerce.
Several dozen of those derelicts had been re-activated in order to confuse Streaker's foe -- a
fearsome Jophur battleship -- but some of the hulks must have failed to haul their bulk out of
the sea when the time came. Those failures were doomed to drift aimlessly underwater until
their engines gave out and they tumbled once more to the murky depths.
As for the rest, there had been no word whether Streaker's ploy succeeded beyond luring
the awful dreadnought away toward deep space. At least Jijo seemed a friendlier place
without it. For now.
"We should have expected this," the archaeologist continued. "When I got away from the
shoreline surf noise, I thought I could detect at least three of the hulks, bumping around out
there almost randomly. It seems kind of sad, when you think about it. Ancient ships, not
worth salvaging when the Buyur abandoned Jijo, waiting in an icy, watery tomb for just one
last chance to climb back out to space. Only these couldn't make it. They're stranded here."
"Like us," Makanee murmured.
Tkett seemed not to hear.
"In fact, I'd like to go back out there and try to catch up with one of the derelicts."
"Whatever for?"
Tkett's smile was still charming and infectious... which made it seem even crazier, under
these circumstances.
"I'd like to use it as a scientific instrument," the big neo-dolphin said.
Makanee felt utterly confirmed in her diagnosis.

Peepoe
 Captivity wasn't as bad as she had feared.
It was worse.
Among natural, pre-sapient dolphins on Earth, small groups of young males would
sometimes conspire to isolate a fertile female from the rest of the pod, herding her away for
private copulation -- especially if she was about to enter heat. By working together, they
might monopolize her matings and guarantee their own reproductive success, even if she
clearly preferred a local alpha-ranked male instead. That ancient behavior pattern persisted in
the wild because, while native tursiops had both traditions and a kind of feral honor, they
could not quite grasp or carry out the concept of law -- a code that all must live by, because
the entire community has a memory transcending any individual.
But modern, uplifted amicus dolphins did have law! And when young hoodlums occasionally
let instinct prevail and tried that sort of thing back home, the word for it was rape.
Punishment was harsh. As with human sexual predators, just one of the likely outcomes was
permanent sterilization.
Such penalties worked. After three centuries, some of the less desirable primal behaviors
were becoming rare. Yet, uplifted neo-dolphins were still a young race. Great stress could
yank old ways back to the fore, from time to time.
And we Streakers have sure been under stress.
Unlike some devolved crewmates, whose grip on modernity and rational thought had
snapped under relentless pressure, Zhaki and Mopol suffered only partial atavism. They could
still talk and run complex equipment, but they were no longer the polite, almost shy junior
ratings she had met when Streaker first set out from Earth under Captain Creideiki, before the
whole cosmos seemed to implode all around the dolphin crew.
In abstract, she understood the terrible strain that had put them in this state. Perhaps, if
she were offered a chance to kill Zhaki and Mopol, Peepoe might call that punishment a bit too
severe.
On the other fin, sterilization was much too good for them.