"Foster, Alan Dean - Dream Done Green" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

In the distance, stark, bare mountains gave promise only of a higher desolation.
Pericles watched the stagnant sea for a long time. Over the intercom his voice was shrunken, the husk of a whisper, those compelling tones beaten down by the moaning wind.
"Is it like this everywhere, Captain?'*
The spacer replied unemotionally. "Mostly. I've seen far worse worlds, sir ... but this one is sure no prize. If I may be permitted an opinion, I'm damned if J can figure out why you want it."
"Can't you feel it, Captain?"
"Sir?" The spacer's expression under his faceglass was puzzled.
"No, no. I guess you cannot. But I do, Captain. Even though this is not the Earth I believed in, I still feel it. I fell in love with a dream. The dream seems to have departed long ago, but the memory of it is still here, still here . . ." Another long pause, then, "You said 'mostly'?"
"Well, yes." The spacer turned and gestured at the distant range. "Being the discovering vessel, we ran a
133
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE , .,
pretty thorough survey, according to the general directives. There are places -- near the poles, in the higher elevations, out in the middle of the three great oceans -- where a certain amount of native life still survives. The cycle of life here has been shattered, but a few of the pieces are still around.
"But mostly, it's like this." He kicked at the sterile sand. "Hot or cold desert -- take your pick. The soil's barren and infertile, the air unfit for man or mal.
"We did find some ruins . . . God, they were old! You saw the artifacts we brought back. But except for its historical value, this world strikes me as particularly worthless."
He threw another kick at the sand, sending flying shards of mica and feldspar and quartz onto the highways of the wind.
Pericles had been thinking. "We won't spend much more time here, Captain." The proud head lifted for a last look at the dead ocean. "There's not much to see."
They'd been back in the offices on Calder only a half-month when Pericles announced his decision.
Dream-partner or no dream-partner, Casperdan exploded.
"You quadrupedal cretin! Warm-blooded sack of fatuous platitudes! Terraforming is only a theory, a hypothesis in the minds of sick romantics. It's impossible!"
"No one has ever attempted it," countered the horse, unruffled by her outburst.
"But ... my God!" Casperdan ran delicate fingers through her flowing blond hair. "There are no facilities for doing such a thing ... no company, no special firms to consult. Why, half the industries that would be needed for such a task don't even exist."
"They will," Pericles declared.
"Oh, yes? And just where will they spring from?"
"You and I are going to create them."
134
Dream Done Green
She pleaded with him. "Have you gone absolutely mad? We're not in the miracle business, you know."
The horse walked to the window and stared down at the Greengreen Sea. His reply was distant. "No . . . we're in the dream business . .. remember?"
A cloud of remembrance came over Casperdan's exquisite face. For a moment, she did -- but it wasn't enough to stem the tide of objection. Though she stopped shouting.
"Please, Per . . . take a long, logical look at this before you commit yourself to something that can only hurt you worse in the end."
He turned and stared evenly at her. "Casperdan, for many, many years now I've done nothing but observe things with a reasoned eye, done nothing without thinking it through beginning, middle, and end and all possible ramifications, done nothing I wasn't absolutely sure of completing.
"Now I'm going to take a chance. Not because I want to do it this way, but because I've run out of options. I'm not mad, no ... but I am obsessed." He looked away from her.
"But I can't do it without you, damn it, and you know why ... no mal can bead a private concern that employs humans."
She threw up her hands and stalked back to her desk. It was silent in the office for many minutes. Then she spoke softly.
"Pericles, I don't share your obsession . . . I've matured, you know . . . now I think I can survive with just the memory of my dream-share. But you rescued me from my own narcissism. And you've given me ... other things. If you can't shake this psychotic notion of yours, I'll stay around till you can."
Horses and geniuses don't cry ... ah, but poets ...!
And that is how the irony came about -- that the first world where terraforming was attempted was not some sterile alien globe, but Old Earth itself. Or as the horse
135
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . ,
Pericles is reputed to have said, "Remade in its own image."
The oceans were cleared ... the laborious, incredibly costly first step. That done, and with a little help from two thousand chemists and bioengineers, the atmosphere began to cleanse itself. That first new air was neither sweet nor fresh -- but neither was it toxic.
Grasses are the shock troops of nature. Moved in first, the special tough strains took hold in the raped soil. Bacteria and nutrients were added, fast-multiplying strains that spread rapidly. From the beachheads near the Arctic and in the high mountains flora and fauna were reintroduced.
Then came the major reseeding of the superfast trees: spruce and white pine, juniper and birch, cypress and mori and teak, fir and ash. And from a tiny, museum on Duntroon, long preserved Sequoia and citrus.
Eventually there was a day when the first flowers were replanted. The hand-planting of the first bush -- a green rose -- was watched by the heads of the agricultural staffs, a black horse, and a ravishing woman in the postbloom of her first rejuvenation.
That's when Pericles registered the Articles. They aroused only minor interest within the sleepy, vast Empire. The subject was good for a few days' conversation before the multitudes returned to more important news.
But among the mal, there was something in the Articles and accompanying pictures that tugged at nerves long since sealed off in men and mankind by time and by choice. Something that pulled each rough soul toward an unspectacular planet circling an unremarkable star in a distant corner of space.
So the mal went back to Old Earth. Not all, but many. They left the trappings of Imperial civilization and confusing intelligence and went to the first mal planet.
More simply, they went home.
There they labored not for man, but for themselves.
136
Dream Done Green