"Frank Herbert - Seed Stock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

There were gaps in the seed rows and, when she squeezed a kernel, the juice ran purple. He recognized
the smell of the bread.

Here was the thing the scientists would not admit. They were trying to makethis place into another
Earth. But it was not and it could never be. The falcons had been the first among their creatures to
discover this, he suspected.

The statement Honida made here was that she and Kroudar would be short-lived. Their children would
be sickly by Mother Earth's standards. Their descendants would change in ways that defied the hopes of
those who had planned this migration. The scientists would hate this and try to stop it.

This gnarled stalk of maize said the scientists would fail.

For a long while, Kroudar crouched there, staring into the future until the torch began to dim, losing its
charge. He aroused himself then, led the way back out of the gorge.

At the top, with the lights of their dying civilization visible across the plain, he stopped, said: 'Thetrodi
run will stop ... soon. I will take one boat and ... friends. We will go out where the falcons go.'

It was one of the longest speeches he had ever made.

She took the light from his hand, extinguished it, pressed herself against him.

'What do you think the falcons have found?'

'The seed,' he said.

He shook his head. He could not explain it, but the thing was there in his awareness. Everything here
exuded poisonous vapors, or juices in which only its own seed could live. Why should thetrodi or any
other sea creature be different? And, with the falcons as evidence, the seed must be slightly less
poisonous to the intruders from Mother Earth.

'The boats are slow,' she said.

He agreed silently. A storm could trap them too far out for a run to safety. It would be dangerous. But
he heard also in her voice that she was not trying to stop him or dissuade him.

'I will take good men,' he said.

'How long will you be gone?' Honida asked.

He thought about this for a moment. The rhythms ofthis place were beginning to make themselves
known to him. His awareness shaped the journey, the days out, the night search over the water where the
falcons were known to sweep in their low guiding runs-then the return.

'Eight days,' he said.
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