"Thomas M. Disch - The Genocides" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

covered with a carpet of the richest green.
Every year since, as there were fewer and fewer people, there were more
converts to Anderson's thesis. Like Noah, he was having the last laugh. But
that didn't stop him from hating, just as Noah must have hated the rains and
rising waters.
Anderson hadn't always hated the Plants so much. In the first years,
when the Government had just toppled and the farms were in their heyday, he
had gone out in the moonlight and just watched them grow. It was like the
speeded-up movies of plant growth he'd seen in Ag School years ago. He had
thought then that he could hold his own against them, but he'd been wrong. The
infernal weeds had wrested his farm from his hands and the town from the hands
of his people.
But, by God, he'd win it back. Every square inch. If he had to root out
every Plant with his two bare hands. He spat significantly.
At such moments Anderson was as conscious of his own strength, of the
force of his resolve, as a young man is conscious of the compulsion of his
flesh or a woman is conscious of the child she bears. It was an animal
strength, and that, Anderson knew, was the only strength strong enough to
prevail against the Plants.
His oldest son ran out of the forest shouting. When Buddy ran, Anderson
knew there was something wrong. "What'd he say?" he asked Neil. Though the old
man would not admit it, his hearing was beginning to go.
"He says Studs got out into the cows. Sounds like a lotta hooey to me."
"Pray God it is," Anderson replied, and his look fell on Neil like an
iron weight.
Anderson ordered Neil back to the village to see that the men did not
forget to bring ropes and prods in their hurry to give pursuit. Then with
Buddy he set off on the clear trail the herd had made. They were about ten
minutes behind them, by Buddy's estimate.
"Too long," Anderson said, and they began to run instead of trotting.
It was easy, running among the Plants, for they grew far apart and their
cover was so thick that no underbrush could grow. Even fungi languished here,
for lack of food. The few aspens that still stood were rotten to the core and
only waiting for a strong wind to fell them. The firs and spruce had entirely
disappeared, digested by the very soil that had once fed them. Years before,
the plants had supported hordes of common parasites, and Anderson had hoped
mightily that the vines and creepers would destroy their hosts, but the Plants
had rallied and it was the parasites who had, for no apparent reason, died.
The giant boles of the Plants rose out of sight, their spires hidden by
their own massive foliage; their smooth, living green was unblemished,
untouched, and like all living things, unwilling to countenance any life but
their own.
There was in these forests a strange, unwholesome solitude, a solitude
more profound than adolescence, more unremitting than prison. It seemed, in a
way, despite its green, flourishing growth, dead. Perhaps it was because there
was no sound. The great leaves overhead were too heavy and too rigid in
structure to be stirred by anything but gale winds. Most of the birds had
died. The balance of nature had been so thoroughly upset that even animals one
would not think threatened had joined the ever-mounting ranks of the extinct.
The Plants were alone in these forests, and the feeling of their being set