"Larry Niven - Building Harlequin's Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Whoever had spirited away the tree had raked afterward. There were no footprints. Andrew or Harry,
she thought. Probably Andrew-he's mean. She could see the hole the theft created clearly-it would have
been the tallest canopy tree once her little jungle finished growing. Rachel blinked back sharp tears that
went with the anger in her belly. How could someone do this and not get caught? Didn't Council see
everything?

She glared at Andrew, who didn't look at her at all, but stood like a perfect innocent, watching the other
students straggle in while he smiled. Harry ignored her too.

Nine other Moon Born trailed into the group. They varied from about ten Earth standard years to
Rachel's fifteen. Ali greeted every one of them formally by name, always including a smile, a personal
question, a touch. She walked through the wildness of tiny trees, bending down and touching a leaf or
branch, looking carefully at the small mounds of dirt ringing each thin trunk, smiling both at nice jobs and
small mistakes. She graded each plot as she went. Ursula and Marry both passed with no rework. Nick
found himself the target of a long lecture, and he had to pull up three seedlings and replant them in
different spots.
Rachel overheard Andrew whispering to Nick, "Too bad you couldn't do it right the first time." She
opened her mouth to hiss at Andrew, but Gabriel silenced her with a stern glance from across the path.
Well, at least he had noticed.

Ali looked at the trees in Rachel's plot for a long time. She didn't ask Rachel a single question, but Rachel
just knew Ali could see the great gap in her carefully planned balance. Rachel bit her lower lip to keep
quiet. Ali simply nodded and smiled and moved on.

How had she done? Did Ali like her work?

Andrew's plot received a momentary glance and a cursory nod.

Just as they were leaving for the meadow, Rachel looked up at the tool tent. Familiar tips of leaves rose
above the edge of the roof. Her cecropia! But what could she say now? It had to be Andrew; he didn't
have the common sense to be careful around Council. He was such a stupid show-off. Now he'd
probably got them both in trouble, and worse, he probably didn't care. She grimaced and walked on,
keeping her silence.

Plastic and stone shapes dotted the meadow. Council had made them by fusing gathered pebbles and
tiny chondrules from asteroids, covering the result with a soft and clear plastic compound. Useful art;
neatly shaped into benches and sometimes into wild swirling sculptures. They had been there all of
Rachel's life.

She'd asked about them once, and Gabriel had said, "Wayne and Ali were bored one year."

The First Trees surrounded the meadow on three sides. Gabriel and Ali planted them, by themselves,
even before any Earth Born were awakened. There were kapoks and figs and palms and gray ciebas just
starting to grow the buttressing roots that would someday be large enough to climb as if they were trees
themselves. Rachel struggled with Council's complicated year-math. Rachel's mother Kristin was Earth
Born, her father one of the first generation of Moon Born, and Rachel was born when he was forty-two
Moon years old, or just over half that many Earth years, and his parents had been awake two Moon
years before they had him, so the trees surrounding the meadow must be ... twenty-five Earth years or
more old. They were tall, the biggest more than a hundred feet. Branches intertwined tightly, even fifty