"Friedman,.C.S.-.Coldfire.2.-.When.True.Night.Falls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friedman C. S)

something cold and sharp. Something that hated killing, even in the
name of justice. It took effort to get the words out. "The sentence
is death."

It's not a killing, he told himself. It's an excision. A cleansing. Ian
had to die so that the rest of them could live. Was that murder?

Call it a sacrifice.

"Listen to me," the botanist protested. "You don't know what you're
doing-"

"Don't I?" he asked angrily. With the toe of one boot he kicked at
the nearer side of Ian's circle, erasing the chalk line. "Damn it,
man! This isn't some primitive tribe in need of a shaman, but a
colony in desperate need of unity! I have enough trouble from the
outside without having to guard against my own people-"

"And how many more deaths can you absorb?" the botanist
demanded. "You know as well as I do that the death rate is
increasing geometrically. How many more nights does this colony
have before it loses the numbers it needs to maintain a viable gene
pool?"

"Two Terran months," he answered gruffly. "But we'll learn how to
fight these creatures. We'll learn how to-"

"Erna will create new ones as fast as you destroy the old! And if
you learn to kill one kind, then the next will be different. Don't you
see, Leo, it's the planet you're fighting, the planet itself! Some
force that controls the local ecosphere, keeping everything in
balance. It doesn't know how to absorb us. It doesn't know how to
connect. But it's going to keep trying." With a shaking hand he
brushed back a lock of hair from his eyes; it fell back down almost
immediately. "Leo, this planet was perfect. No drought, no famine,
no cycles of surfeit and starvation like there are on Earth... think of
it! A whole ecology in utter harmony - a true Eden. And then we
came. And threatened that harmony by our very presence-"

"And you think these rituals will change all that?" Case asked
harshly.

"I think they'll give us a tool. A means of communication. That's the
challenge, don't you see? We have to impress the power here with
Terran symbology, so that we have some way to reach out to it. To
control it, Leo! If we don't manage that, then we may as well pack it
in here and now. Because all our technology won't stop it from
killing, when it controls the very laws of nature." "So you answer it
with more killing? Feed it blood-" "Sacrifice is the most ancient and
powerful symbol we have," Ian told him. "Think of it! When primitive