"Frankowski,.Leo.-.Conrad.Starguard.5.-.Lord.Conrad's.Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

Leo Frankowski - Conrad Starguard 5 - Lord Conrad's Lady

Book 5 of the Adventures of Conrad Starguard

Prologue

On the lush African plain, at two and a half million years B.C., two
small brown individuals were sitting naked on a small hill. To all
outward appearances they were a pair of type twenty-seven proto-
humans.

"There's blood on your leg," he said.

"I'm menstruating. The antifertility vaccine is wearing off. It's been
a hundred and eighty years, and the shot was only supposed to
last a century."

"Yeah. My shots are wearing out, too. My eyesight is going bad,
and my joints hurt a lot in the mornings. "

"We're getting old," she said. "Just like people used to grow old
before technology."

"They'll never find us, you know. If they were looking, they would
have been here by now."

"What did we ever do to deserve this?" she said.

"I didn't do anything. You dumped the boss's cousin into the
thirteenth century when the guy didn't even know about time travel."

"Shut up! I don't want to talk about it again."

"Well, there's something we ought to talk about. We're getting old.
Before too many more years, we won't be able to take care of
ourselves anymore. If we stay with the protos, they'll treat us the
same way they treat their own parents when they get too old to be
useful. They'll just abandon us," he said.

"So?"

"So we have to do something about it! We have to make sure that
there's somebody around to take care of us when we get really old.
See, my antifertility shots have worn off, too. For the next few years
you can still have children, and I'm still fit enough to take care of
you and them. If we raise them right, they'll take care of us when it
really gets bad."

"You're such an asshole. Do you think I'd have children and raise
them to live in this environment? To be savages two million years