"Raymond Z. Gallun - Dawn of the Demigods Or, People Minus X" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gallun Raymond Z)

from his mother's body. There's another way; almost the same, really. Babies
are born -- they're made, really -- in a laboratory. Then they live in a youth
center, like the one on the hill."
Eddie saw its great white spire looming among the trees. Often he could
hear voices in the gardens and playgrounds on the terraced setbacks of its




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many levels. The voices seemed mysterious somehow.
Even then Eddie sensed the groping and confusion that was in his
parents' minds. Sometimes his mother would speak fervently to his father:
"Jack, I'd never choose to live in another age. I love it. Because it's rich,
endlessly varied, exciting. Is that why I'm often scared out of my wits? Even
disgusted often enough with my selfish self and all the automatic devices? I
love my work, the planning of pleasant interiors. I'm so busy there doesn't
even seem to be time for another child. Yet maybe there are centuries ahead,
Jack. How does one fill centuries without getting fed up? And are we supposed
to be something superhuman in the end? Or do we wind up like the ancient
Martians and the beings of the Asteroid Planet, before it was blown to
millions of pieces? Wiped out in super-conflict, before they could progress
very much further than we are now?"
Most of this went over Eddie's head. But it left a smoky tension to
lurk in his mind behind the peaceful presence of sun and trees. People had
made their world more beautiful for their own relaxed enjoyment. Yet even in
those days Eddie sensed the turbulent undercurrent deep inside them.
Once his father expressed a vagrant thought: "Maybe we should go out to
Venus sometime, Eileen. Start life over more simply in an uncrowded planet
that's being conditioned to receive our ancient race. Maybe we'll do it in
just a few years." He grinned.
"Yes," Eddie's mother replied. "If being indefinitely young and alive
doesn't fool us before then. If our complicated civilization doesn't crack
open and spit fire, and vaporize everybody. Death by violence is still
definitely possible. You know, lots of our friends are getting their bodies
and minds recorded so that they can be restored in case of serious injury.
Maybe we should have done it long ago."
Jack Dukas met her concern with a light tease: "A woman's worry matched
against the stubbornness of a man -- eh, Eileen? There's something unnatural
about being recorded that I rebel against. Don't be too troubled, though. The
centuries won't slip from our fingers so immediately. I hardly ever touch a
dangerous thing in my work. Besides, safety devices are almost perfect."
Such serious, troubled thoughts did not dim the optimism and eagerness
of young Ed Dukas. His private dreams soared into the thrills of Someday. His
small hands were impatient to grasp the shadowy shapes of the future, more
legendary than the not-distant past with its still-living heroes: Roland, who
was largely responsible for the rejuvenation process; Schaeffer, who developed
the sensipsych, brought on the dream-world period of decay, and in the end
helped Harwell defeat the trap of emasculating visions by urging mankind back
toward a vigorous grip on reality; and the hundreds of others who had taken