"John Dalmas - The Helverti Invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

the raft passed, some hundred yards out, a long canoe overtook it from
behind, driven by twenty paddlers, their strokes slow and synchronized.
As it overtook the raft, men shouted back and forth. Briefly the raft's
steersman sculled as if to keep ahead, but after a few powerful strokes he
stopped, his cheerful call belying the fist he shook.
Shortly both craft disappeared downstream. Soon another great canoe
appeared, this one from the south, moving slowly upstream, its paddlers
digging more quickly, but still synchronized. It too had a tent near the
middle. It seemed to Mazeppa a great chief must lie in its shade, perhaps
napping. He watched it approach and pass. After a bit, it landed below the
enclosure's high stone walls, and men disembarked.
Leaving Mazeppa alone by the hypnotically murmuring river, sunlight
dazzling on its water. After an indeterminate time of near-trance, a voice
spoke to him, not in his ears but in his mind. He'd expected a voice, but
this one? It was, he realized, the voice of Jesus. "Mazeppa," it told him,
"someday you will rule all this, you and your people. All of it: the great
river and the land along it. Including the great town, and Palace, and all
they contain. It is what you were born for."
***
Then Mazeppa slept. When he awoke, the sun was behind him, low,
missing the water entirely, glowing gold on the treetops along the distant
bank. Where he lay, dusk was settling. Quietly he crept backward, away
from the shore, quietly got to his feet, and quietly returned to his tethered
pony, which had spent the day browsing the undergrowth within its reach.
Despite days of fasting, Mazeppa vaulted onto its back, ready to return
home, no longer a boy, a man now, his vision quest completed. He'd ride
west as he'd ridden east, following or paralleling the great trail the Sotans
had beaten in the earth with their comings and goings.
And mostly he would ride by night, for in this land he was the enemy. Ride
watchfully, listening, his nostrils reading the air, and not just for danger.
Because now his fast was over, and it was time to kill and eat. There
would be something: a porcupine feeding audibly in a treetop, the smell of
its careless evacuations rank in the still night air; or a beaver taking
advantage of the darkness, dragging a branch to a streambank. Then he
would dismount, string his bow, nock an arrow and wait, letting his eyes
find the target if they could. Wait till dawn if need be. And after he had
killed, thanked his prey and eaten, he would lie up in a thicket well away
from the Sotan trail, and sleep, to dream whatever after-dreams might
follow Jesus's message. Lie up till sunset. The moon would be halfway up
the eastern sky then, mostly full, and he could travel swiftly.

From Galactics 202
Studies in Cosmology

Parallel universes are not generated randomly or regularly. They result
when a sophont chooses, knowingly or not, between alternative actions of
sufficiently effective differences.
Like a stone thrown into a pond, the results of choice propagate outward
in what can be likened to a ripple effect. But unless the matric location is
suitably unstable and the initiating decision suits the circumstances, the