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

Instead of leading him toward the green lights and glass roofs of the hydroponic gardens, though, she
guided their steps in the opposite direction toward the deep gorge where the river plunged into the
harbor.

There were no guards along the footpath, only an occasional stone marker and grotesqueries of native
growth. Swiftly, without speaking, she led him to the gorge and the narrow path which he knew went
only down to a ledge which jutted into the damp air of the river's spray.

Kroudar found himself trembling with excitement as he followed Honida's shadowy figure, the firefly
darting of her light. It was cold on the ledge and the alien outline of native trees revealed by the torch
filled Kroudar with disquiet.

What had Honida discovered-or created?

Condensation dripped from the plants here. The river noise was loud. It was marsh air he breathed,
dank and filled with bizarre odors.

Honida stopped, and Kroudar held his breath. He listened. There was only the river.

For a moment, he didn't realize that Honida was directing the orange light of the torch at her discovery.
It looked like one of the native plants-a thing with a thick stem crouched low to the land, gnarled and
twisted, bulbous yellow-green protrusions set with odd spacing along its length.

Slowly, realization came over him. He recognized a darker tone in the green, the way the leaf structures
were joined to the stalk, a bunching of brown-yellow silk drooping from the bulbous protrusions. 'Maize,'
he whispered.

In a low voice, pitching her explanation to Kroudar's vocabulary, Honida explained what she had done.
He saw it in her words, understood why she had done this thing stealthily, here away from the scientists.
He took the light from her, crouched, stared with rapt attention. This meant the death of those things the
scientists held beautiful. It ended their plan forthis place.

Kroudar could see his own descendants in this plant. They might develop bulbous heads, hairless, wide
thick-lipped mouths. Their skins might become purple. They would be short statured; he knew that.

Honida had assured this-right here on the river-drenched ledge. Instead of selecting seed from the tallest,
the straightest stalks, the ones with the longest and most perfect ears-the ones most like those from
Mother Earth-she had tested her maize almost to destruction. She had chosen sickly, scrawny plants,
ones barely able to produce seed. She had taken only those plants whichthis place influenced most
deeply. From these, she had selected finally a strain which livedhere as native plants lived. This was
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native maize.

She broke off an ear, peeled back the husk.