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

"It is the thought of Rose the Healer," Rack protested.

"He speaks in symbols," said the teachers, "for the process of evolution
crawled forward on feeble legs through"—Rack again received an image of
a vast series of sun cycles—"to meet the slowly deteriorating conditions."

"And yet," Rack argued, "Rose the Healer said that the sun flared up
and killed the Old Ones suddenly."

"It is against logic," said the teachers. "For have we not observed the
sun for countless sun circles and has it not been stable?"

"How do you explain this, then?"

And there were others that had tails and died birthing and those
with malformed features and stomachs without vital organs.


"We know little," they admitted, "for the Old Ones had no Keepers and
all their store of knowledge, however insignificant, has been lost. We can
only presume that such a race, with none of the advantages of civilization,
with no kept records, existed on the plenty of a youthful planet, feeding
and breathing the bounty of nature. There are also legends of other living
things. And yet we find no proof. Surely, had the Old Ones built we would
find remnants of their achievements, for is not the Material everlasting,
resisting the acids of the air and the smoke of the burning earth of the
southern lands?"

"Could they have built of the hard materials?"

"Negative, negative," they sent. "You have traveled far. You have talked
with many Healers who have nuggets, and yet, have you found the source
of the hard material? Is it conceivable that there was once a life form on
the planet capable of producing such a lifeless material? Could you
possibly think that enough of the hard material could be amassed to
construct even one establishment?"

"But there is more than one type," Rack said. "I have seen yellow and
white, dark and light. Some nuggets feed on themselves with dark waste,
while others, such as my large one, grow only a white, powdery waste
when exposed to the yellow of the air."

"Another proof," said the teachers. "It feeds on itself. In a short span of
sun circles an establishment made of your hard material would be
reduced."

The hard material was indeed fragile. But Rack had a new idea.
"Perhaps," he said, his heart beating with excitement, for he was being
daring, "the hard material came from the bowels of the earth."