"Zach Hughes - The Book of Rack the Healer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

Once he had incurred the wrath of a Far Seer when he tied up the
minds of three Keepers at once with questions regarding reported findings
of hard-material nuggets. Red Earth discovered that he was unable to
record observations because Rack was monopolizing his personal Keeper.
Monitoring the contact, he was chagrined to discover that the young
Healer was seriously interested in trying to gather enough information to
make it possible for him to amass a personal hoard of hard-material
nuggets. To Red Earth, hard-material nuggets were interesting and had
often led to speculative discussions regarding the talents and abilities of
the Old Ones, but they were totally useless. It was true that in the lands
across the eastern sea hard-material nuggets were used as a reward for
services rendered by duty-driven citizens, but there were many strange
things about those who inhabited the land beyond the sea. Red Earth did
not want to see his area become involved in the useless accumulation of
valueless objects. He had reprimanded Rack the Healer severely, had
recommended an educational tour of gathering fresh slime-source plants
from the chill waters of the far north, and had been pleased to find that
Rack had matured when he returned.

On only one other occasion had Rack displeased the Far Seers. In his
first tour out of the Eastern Group Establishment, his work output had
been seriously low on certain days. Red Earth discovered that once again
Rack was probing the storage mind of Growing Tree's Keeper about the
Old Ones and in particular about the sunken city of Nar. Where Rack had
found that particular bit of folk legend was a puzzle for Red Earth, for all
such pseudoinformation had long before been erased from the mind
banks. Perhaps Rack had discovered it hidden in some Keeper's mind
where it had been filed out of context and he had searched for the
nonexistent sunken city to the detriment of his slime-source quota.

During a long session with Rack, Red Earth had tried to impress on
him the importance of responsibility, duty to the race, and the need to
bend every effort toward survival. Too long had the Far Seers been alone in
the knowledge that life on the planet was precarious at best. And at first
Red Earth had thought that Rack's inquiring mind was receptive. He
listened carefully to Red Earth's summary of conditions, agreed that one
should not waste one's energies in chasing the ghosts of the Old Ones but
should, instead, search for ways, however small, of improving conditions.
"We are the results of evolution," Red Earth told him. Rack received a
picture of a period of sun circles so vast and so protracted, the images of
sun circles extending back and back, that his mind was not capable of
seeing the whole. "All of us—Far Seers, Healers, Keepers, Power Givers
—are the logical results of life, the end results to this time. Nature, in her
wisdom, has created in us the ability to cope with the problems of a dying
planet, but she has not made the task an easy one. It is up to us to help as
we await her next move."

Such talk did indeed interest Rack. He was, after all, involved in life.
But still there was something in him that drove him to question the ways
of his world. Was the ultimate pleasure service to one's race? If so, why did