"Damon Knight - The Last Word" - читать интересную книгу автора (Knight Damon)

The man did not seem to be listening. “If there was some way,” he said, staring at his marks, “that we
could keep tally of the fences, and put them back exactly the way they were before –”

“Nonsense,” I interrupted. “You’re a wicked boy to suggest such a thing. What would your old dad say
? Whatever was good enough for him …”

All this time, the woman had not spoken. Now she took the long stick out of the man’s hand and
examined it curiously. “But why not?” she said, pointing to the lines in the dirt. The man had drawn an
outline roughly like that of his fields, with the stone marking one corner.

It was at that moment that the jackal charged. He was gaunt and desperate, and his jaws were full of
sharp yellow teeth.

With the stick she was holding, the woman hit him over the snout. The jackal ran away, howling
piteously.

“Tut,” I said, taken aback. “Life is struggle …”

The woman said a rude word, and the man came at me with a certain light in his eye, so I went away.
And do you know, when I came back after the next flood, they were measuring off the fields with ropes
and poles?

Cowardice again – that man did not want to argue about the boundaries with his neighbour’s muscular
cousin. Another lucky accident, and there you are. Geometry.

If only I had had the foresight to send a cave bear after the first man who showed that original,
lamentable spark of curiosity … Well, it was no use wishing. Not even I could turn the clock back.

Oh, I gained a few points as time went on. Instead of trying to suppress the inventive habit, I learned to
direct it along useful lines. I was instrumental in teaching the Chinese how to make gunpowder.
(Seventy-five parts saltpetre, thirteen parts brimstone, twelve parts charcoal, if you’re interested. But the
grinding and mixing are terribly difficult; they never would have worked it out by themselves.) When they
used it only for fireworks, I didn’t give up; I introduced it again inEurope. Patience was my long suit. I
never took offence. When Luther threw an inkwell at me, I was not discouraged. I persevered.



I did not worry about my occasional setbacks; it was my successes that threatened to overthrow me.
After each of my wars, there was an impulse that drew men closer together. Little groups fought each
other until they formed bigger groups; then the big groups fought each other until there was only one left.
 I had played this game out over and over, with the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, and, in the end, I
had destroyed every one. But I knew the danger. When the last two groups spanned the world between
them, the last war might end in universal peace, because there would be no one left to fight.

My final war would have to be fought with weapons so devastating, so unprecedentedly awful, that man
would never recover from it.

It was.

On the fifth day, riding the gale, I could look down on a planet stripped of its forests, its fields, even its