"Richard A. Lupoff - After the Dreamtime" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lupoff Richard A)

Perhaps I will go to visit Wuluwaid's Bunbulama if she is still alive by
then. She will be very old then if she is still alive. I will sit by her side
holding her grayed-out hand in my grayed-out hand, and we will speak of
her Wuluwaid and of her beautiful dead Miralaidj, and together we will
weep. Perhaps my Kunapi half Dua will be with us then. Bunbulama will
hold me and say, "Ah, Jiritzu, now we are alone. Now whom have we to
love?"

Childlessness is unusual among us. There is rivalry between the Aranda
and the Kunapi to grow more numerous, but there is no serious wishing of
ill between the tribes. There is need for us; no other race of mankind can
sail the membrane ships. Without us there would be only the huge clumsy
sealed ships that other men can manage, ships constructed all of sealed
and shielded tanks where men travel between the stars like bits of canned
dingo-meal.

Bunbulama does not know that she is alone. She thinks that her man
and her daughter are sailing the Djanggawul on the great path from
Yurakosi to N'Jaja to pick up passengers, thence by way of Yirrkalla to
make the great tack at the place of the triple suns, from there to Nala to
deposit our burden of meat, and onward by way of old earth before
returning to Yurakosi.

Djanggawul will brake as she approaches our sun, will swing into
docking orbit at Port Bralku, sailors will make planetfall along with a
cargo of trade goods, families will be reunited. Bunbulama will await sight
of Wuluwaid her man and Miralaidj her child, but they are in the
Dreamtime and she will not see them again on Yurakosi.

If I return to Yurakosi, I will bear her the word of what took place on
this voyage. Otherwise the duty will fall to Dua, Kunapi, my friend. That I
would not envy him.

I will not flee, I will not transfer to another ship nor make planetfall at
any world other than Yurakosi. Not even at old earth, although I would
like to set foot on the soil of Australia, would like to sail a ship on an ocean
of old earth. But I will bear news to Bunbulama if I am not myself by then
in the Dreamtime. If I am, Dua will carry word to Bunbulama on our
world.

Our journey started well enough. On their little mudballs the meat were
warring again. Old earth remained aloof, her concern turned inward as it
had been since the fast ships had first permitted the escape of her nations
to the stars, to find new planets of their own on which to plant their
banners of nationhood or religious tyranny or politics.

The great nations of old earth had been dismembered, their petty
successors had seen opportunity for new glory, out among the stars. Whole
worlds had beckoned, an infinity of planets among which to choose. No