"Alexei Panshin - Sons of Prometheus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Panshin Alexei)

So you have the knowledge of Life and Death.
And what can you do with it? How can you use it . . .

I

As the solid-wheeled, almost spring-less coach progressed through the rutted streets, Tansman,
coming near to his destination, felt more tense than at any moment since he'd been set down on Zebulon.
There was little traffic and little noise, and he looked through the coach window to see many of the adobe
houses they passed shut and shuttered. He was the only passenger in the coach. He wasn't particularly
afraid of sickness, so the warning he'd had against the megrim when he bought his seat for North Hill had
passed over his head. Tansman was thinking of the last thing that Nancy Poate had said before he left the
Ship.
It was standard advice, and he had had it before: Zebulon? Whatever you do, don't let them know
where you come from. They finger-across-the-neck Ship people. (Accompanied with appropriate sound
effect.) Nancy had simply reminded him that taking care and coming back were two things she expected
of him. It was nice of her to say that, and—hang the irony—remember the Sons of Prometheus. ("They"
being the ones who had gotten it in the neck).
Zebulon was not really the place for a chromoplastician with a positive distaste for do-gooding and
an unadventurous temperament. This one, however, had a determined and formidable older cousin
named Nancy Poate which was an off-setting factor beyond calculation.
"Phil," she had said, "did you, or did you not, tell me last week that you were finished with that silly
set of experiments that you have been working on?"
"Yes."
"Then you need a vacation. This will be a vacation."
"Nancy, I'll grant that after Earth was destroyed in the Population Wars we owed the Colonies more
than we gave them, but this sneaking around doing paternal good works to people, who just want to be
left alone, doesn't appeal to me. You don't dare come out in the open because you're afraid they'll wring
your neck and you aren't willing to leave them alone. So what do you do? You prod and you poke, you
try to establish trade routes and you hand out propaganda and how-to-do-it books, and that makes you
feel good. Well, I don't want it."
Nancy, bluff and unstoppable—and Tansman was convinced she didn't have herself remodeled
because her appearance helped her to overwhelm people and get her own way—just nodded and said,
"I knew I was right to pick on you, Phil. You won't be tempted to meddle. All you'll have to do is be
there for a month, keeping an eye on things."
"No," he had said.
“Phil," she had said, "don't be uffy." The way she'd said it had made him laugh.

So here Tansman was on Zebulon, no less stuffy for being here; reluctant fire-bringer, muttering to
himself about a man he had yet to meet named Hans Rilke who was a do-gooder with an undurable liver.
Wishing Nancy Poate a better occupation than coordinating the activities of do-gooders—including the
replacement of their innards—he laughed at himself for being fond enough of his cousin to allow her to
jolly him into doing what he didn't particularly want to do. For all that they called themselves "The
Group," Nancy Poate's people were still lower-key Sons of Prometheus and Tansman had no wish to
tempt either Zeus or the Ship-hating population of Zebulon. He thought again how appropriate it was that
Rilke should have a liver complaint—that had been Prometheus' problem, too.
In his lifetime, Tansman had traveled a good many thousand light-years, but this was only the third
time he'd been away from his home. That home was a ship built to ferry a comparative few from an
over-populated Earth about to destroy itself, to make fresh starts in a variety of new places where, it was
hoped, the same mistakes would not be repeated. Those carried—many of them with no belief in the
altogether unlikely future they were assured was coming—took nothing but their own reasons for leaving