"Sean McMullen - A Greater Vision" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

"Nothing less."
Nunga trod the hatch stud, and the hatchway bulged clear of the water then stretched open. He
stamped down the steps without taking his leave of either the captain or navigator. Mudati and Wirana
were now alone under the brightening sky.
"He'll be onto the satellite link to complain about me just as soon as he reaches his cell," said Wirana.
Mudati stood beside her then pointed up at Jupiter.
"This is your last quarter with us before you go there," he stated rather than asked. Wirana nodded.
"I'll be shuttled to lunar orbit about midsummer, to spend a few months of accustomisation aboard the
Wondibingi before we leave for Jupiter."
"You should do well. In your two years' trial aboard this vessel you have been a model officer,
well-suited to long voyages in isolation. How long is the Jupiter voyage?"
"Nine years, all up. I'll be forty four when I return."
"Ten years at the Academiem, three years on the Lunar Orbit Assembler, three on the moon, two
years of isolation experience with us-- your whole life has been a build-up to Jupiter."
Wirana looked up at Jupiter, gleaming brightly not far from Mars. "It's a chance to be first, to walk on
the frontier. That's enough to gamble a life upon."
"How would you feel if it was cancelled?"
She looked down at the water swirling about their feet. "I know what you are leading to, Captain."
"Well then, explain. Why are you going out of your way to antagonise Nunga?"
"If he flings himself under my feet, he'll be stepped on."
"That's no answer. He's been mentioning you in his reports."
"He does not understand the frontier," she said slowly, looking now at the distant sails of the nao and
its two attendant caravels. "Admiral Colombo and his crews have performed nothing short of a miracle to
get as far as this, yet Nunga... you heard what he said, he called him the quarry, as if he was hunting a
crocodile. People like to turn their enemies into things before they destroy them. That's what Nunga is
doing."
"But nobody is going to be destroyed."
"Not bodies, not even souls, but something far more vital." She kicked at the swirling water. "I'm
sorry, I should not be talking like this. It's not your fault. I feel... so isolated, like those men on the ships. I
wish that they could have their discovery."
"And what would follow? Dozens more ships, hundreds, thousands, and on every ship hundreds of
ravening freebooters in search of easy gold, slaves and conquest."
"Conquest of what? Civilisations that practice human sacrifice?"
"Which the ancestors of these men were practising only two thousand years earlier. If it comes to that,
need I remind you of what is going on in Europe at this very moment in the name of their religion? Their
religion ignores the Land, they degrade the soil, drive species to extinction and torture their own kind.
Not one of those ships has a soil chamber on board."
"So what happened in Australis after we arrived? Where is our megafauna? What happened to our
coniferous forests?"
"But we learned, Wirana. Now it's our duty to teach but we're not ready, we need time and resources
to turn their whole society around. Our planners never dreamed that they would develop so fast."
They had been through it all before, and it was not even a matter of convincing Wirana. They stood
together, looking out after the little ships, waves washing over their feet with the undulations of the
submarine's muscles. Colombo was on the frontier, somewhere that Wirana would be soon, yet she had
to name the time to take his frontier away from him. She despised herself for it.
Mudati raised his binoculars and stared at the ships for a while. "Most of their journey is behind them
now. Their ships are bearing up well, and the weather's good. They're rigged for speed. The birds flying
about them should suggest that land is close, and its direction."
"I know, and there's been weed and flotsam in the water for days now. He must be certain of landfall,
he'll not give up."