"Beowulf's Children" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

The saltwater tanks were raised five feet above the ground and sunk six feet beneath it. The pen was drained, and the Miskatonic was pumping in at the rate of three hundred liters a minute. Skeeter VI came to a hovering halt, its tail rotors foaming the water.
Little Chaka waited on the white-tiled lip of the tanks. Jessica untied the cargo line. The roll of foaming sheeting loosened, and twelve feet of eel splashed into the shallow water. She jumped down to stand beside Chaka and waved the skeeter away.
The eel lay at the bottom of the tank, barely covered as the water level slowly climbed. "I think it's just stunned," Little Chaka yelled. He knelt next to the pen to examine the dark eel. "Looks to be moving water through the gills. Let's add a little oxygen." He whispered to his comm card. There were more bubbles from the air inputs at the bottom of the tank. "That ought to take care of her."
Little Chaka Mubutu was almost six and a half feet tall, dark-skinned but with the narrow features more often found in whites. He looked quite unlike his adopted father. Dr. Mubutu--Big Chaka. Together they were the colony's premier biologists. Dr. Mubutu was still at home, at the marine research facility west of Surf's Up.
"Nothing else to do," he said. "We don't know enough to help."
"I hope she lives," Jessica said.
"So do I. She looks tough. Leave it to Mother Nature. I'm going in. Coming?"
"Let me get my kit." Skeeter VI buzzed down to a hexagonal concrete landing pad next to Biomed. Jessica grabbed her belt pouch as it shut down. The still turning rotors fluttered her hair in all directions, but she didn't notice. She hurried into the building.
Little Chaka had the holos up and running by the time she entered Aquatics. The station's west wall disappeared as the cameras and tank sensors displayed data from the churning, foaming tank. Chaka sat in an oversized swivel chair, the keyboard on his lap. He waved toward a more normal sized chair. "What do we have here?" Chaka asked.
"You should know better than me."
"File name?"
"Mother Eel."
"Cassandra?" Chaka said softly. "Let's see what we know about Mother Eel."
"Integrating files. Done. Records now available," the computer's cool, familiar voice answered. Chaka's version of Cassandra's neutral voice had been given a lyrical New Guinea lilt.
The holo divided into two images. One remained with the eel, and the other replayed the skeeter's-eye view of its heroic spawning odyssey.
"What do we have . . . ?" Chaka whispered. He watched the tail drop off, and chuckled.
"What happened there?" Jessica asked.
"The Amazon is glacier water, poor in minerals. Mama Eel is making sure her babies have food."
"Cannibals?"
"No, this is a salmon trick, Jessica. The salmon of Earth swam upstream and died. Mama here only leaves her tail, but it's the same trick. Tail will rot. Parasites in the tail will multiply drastically as tissue decomposes. Insects come to dine. Water boils with insects and worms and such. Hatchlings have their dinner, won't they, Mama?"
Outside, the clouded sky cleared for a moment, and Tau Ceti glared through the Aquatics building's domed ceiling, dimming the holos. The ceiling polarized, and the holos brightened.
Slowly, the eel began to twitch again.
"Let's get a closer look," Little Chaka murmured.
The eel ballooned up before them. Its skin disappeared as Cassandra obligingly bounced ultrasound through the water, and then adjusted the scans. "Ah ha--"
The door burst open, and Zack Moskowitz stormed in.
Avalon's chairman was about fifty-five Earth years old, thirty-eight Avalon, and a slightly heavier gravity hadn't been kind to him. His shoulders stooped, and his face was deeply lined. The mustache and eyebrows that gave him an unfortunate resemblance to Groucho Marx were thinner now, speckled with white. Care and woe, stress and responsibility had bent him as if physical burdens.
"Jessica!" he roared. "I gave you a direct order to kill that thing."
"Why?" she asked mildly. "And by the way: hi, Zack."
"Standing Order Municipal Rule One-four-two. 'Until adjudged otherwise, all new species are to be considered hostile.' This is the first time something this large has returned to the island. It has pronounced amphibious tendencies."
"So does my niece, but that doesn't make her a grendel."
"Look at this." Chaka slid into a swivel chair, lacing his thick dark fingers behind his head. The eel's head became orca-sized, revealing a mouthful of tiny, even, sharp-looking teeth. "Mama eats small fish. She might take a chomp out of your leg if you tromped on her. Sorry to disillusion you, Zack, but you wouldn't be her idea of lunch."
Zack grunted, then turned back to Jessica. "I don't care," he said. "An order is an order."
"I know," Jessica said, her voice still extremely even. "Rules are rules, because we can't trust individual judgment. You can't trust your individual judgment." And I was never frozen. I don't have ice on my mind. "Zack, my father wrote most of the Standing Orders, remember?"
"You're taking advantage," Zack said. "Cadmann will be back tomorrow."
Jessica leaned forward. "What makes you think that I care? The Grendel Scouts are controlled by Second Generation. Biomed is controlled by Second Generation. This is for Star Born, not Earth Born."
"At the moment."
"The eel was spotted by--"
"--sensors created and monitored by adults. First Generation. We set up the alert and sent out the skeeter. You commandeered it, and directly countermanded my order--"
Jessica's blue eyes narrowed hotly. "Cadmann's Bluff is not incorporated into the township of Avalon Town, never has been, never will be, and you damned well know why. The eel was captured there. My father is incommunicado. Justin and I are in command of the Bluff until he returns. I made my decision based upon my authority on the Bluff and my control of the Grendel Scouts. Chaka?"
Chaka spun in his swivel chair. "Mother Eel is secure, Zack. We can put a net over the tank, if you want."
"You know damned well that isn't the issue. The issue is that you exceeded your authority. I am responsible for the security of this colony--"
Jessica's smile was hard, but her voice remained even and untempered. "And although I had no hand in giving you that authority, I have abided by the decision. Until now. But I think we can learn more about Avalon from a live creature--and we have eggs coming down the mountain--"
"Eggs?" Zack was furious. "I want them destroyed--"
"You are the civilian authority, and as such have control of ordinary emergencies. But this isn't one of them, it's no emergency at all. It is the normal functioning of the planet, Zack. The ecology is returning. The signs have been there for eight years. Plants. Fairy-brollies, and look what they grew into! No birds, but we have new fish, new insects--Zack, this is important, this is the way this island used to be. This is for a joint council. Earth Born and Star Born--"
"Adults and Second Generation," Zack said absently.
"All right, but this is for the joint council. First and Second Generations, together. Or the biology board. But it's not something for rules, or a panicked, autocratic decision."
"But--"
"Our world, Zack," Jessica said. "Ours, not just yours."
"It was my impression, Zack, that this was a republic--not a principality." Chaka's tone was mocking, but gentle. "And it is our world too."