"Larry Niven - Beowulf's Children (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

offer, two hundred chosen from eight billion people. Our parents. They are the
Earth Born. But they didn't know the truth about their new world, a truth that
you -- " His long sensitive fingers, sculptor's fingers, bunched and stabbed
as if each and every child were guilty of unspeakable crimes. " -- you Star
Born, have never been told...until now. Until this week. Until tonight."
Justin's voice carried the authority and infinite wisdom of all his nineteen
years. None of the children was older than thirteen. Now they were youngsters,
Grendel Biters. Tonight would be their first step toward becoming Grendel
Scouts. At dawn they had left the human settlement called Avalon Town and
hiked across the plain, along the Miskatonic River, then up Mucking Great
Mountain along the minor tributary called the Amazon. Lunch and dinner were
little more than stream water.
Their curious and eager shining eyes were black and brown and blue and jade,
carrying genetic gifts from every people of Earth. Their limber young bodies
were as perfect as the night stars, their minds filled with dreams more
incandescent still. These were the exhausted young inheritors of a world new
to Man.
"...the rivers were filled with a fish they called samlon. And they caught
the fish, and ate the fish..." Justin slipped a knife from his belt sheath. He
poked its point about in the smoking pan, skewing a morsel of sizzling meat.
He held it up, worrying the ragged, black-burnt chunk of flesh with his teeth.
Then he passed both pan and knife to his right, to a ten-year-old girl with
blond, shoulder-length hair.
She bit gingerly at first, then harder to tear a piece loose. The texture
resembled tough beef, not at all like fish. She chewed -- and the meat bit
back. She clawed at her throat, gasping, but managed to pass both pan and
knife to her right. A boy dark-skinned as the surrounding night made a choking
sound, and whispered "Water..."
Their eyes misted. Some struggled with wretched coughs, but no one moved. The
pan circled the campfire until there was nothing left but smoking iron.
"But one night the river which gave life to the colony, brought death. Even
now, even here, high up on Mucking Great, if the wind is very quiet, on a
night like tonight, you can hear old Misk calling..."
Justin trailed off. With superbly theatrical timing, the wind dwindled to a
murmur. There in the distance roared the mighty Miskatonic, rushing past the
foot of Mucking Great...or was that only the Amazon?
"The samlon developed legs, and teeth, and a taste for human blood. They
became...grendels. They clawed their way from the river, gasped air, and found
it good. They moved so fast that other animals looked like statues to them.
They slaughtered everything they saw. Our parents fought back, but it was no
use. The camp was lost. Cadmann Weyland led the survivors here to his
stronghold on Mucking Great, where they made their last stand.
"And there -- " Justin's thin finger cast an unsteady shadow toward the
irregular chunk of stone called Snailhead Rock. "That was where my father
died, torn to pieces by the ravening horde. And there on the verandah is where
Phyllis McAndrews was killed, still screaming reports to the orbiting crew of
Geographic. And there..." Justin was lost in the story now, beginning to
hyperventilate. "...others were caught, torn apart and devoured by frenzied
grendels moving faster than eyes can see. Down there by the cliff edge -- "
The dark hid it. " -- two men waited in a wrecked skeeter while grendels