"Mike Resnick - A Little Knowledge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

"When the aardvark reached the kingdom of the ants, he immediately
attacked the wise ants, but the mound withstood his greatest efforts, and the
ants within survived by eating their sugar and honey. Finally, after many
fruitless days, the aardvark wandered over to the kingdom of the foolish ants,
and dined well that evening."
Ngai fell silent, and none of His creatures dared ask Him to speak
further. Instead, they returned to their homes and discussed His story, and
made their preparations for the coming drought.
A year passed, and finally the men decided to sacrifice an innocent
goat, and that very day Ngai's tears fell upon the parched and barren land.
The next morning Ngai again summoned His creatures to the holy mountain.
"How have you fared during the past year?" He asked each of them.
"Very badly," moaned the elephant, who was very thin and weak. "We did
as you instructed us, and built a mound, and gathered sugar and honey -- but
we grew hot and uncomfortable within the mound, and there is not enough sugar
and honey in all the world to feed a family of elephants."
"We have fared even worse," wailed the lion, who was even thinner, "for
lions cannot eat sugar and honey at all, but must have meat."
And so it went, as each animal poured out its misery. Finally Ngai
turned to the man and ask him the same question.
"We have fared very well," replied the man. "We built a container for
water, and filled it before the drought came, and we stockpiled enough grain
to last us to this day."
"I am very proud of you," said Ngai. "Of all my creatures, only you
understood my story."
"It is not fair!" protested the other animals. "We built mounds and
saved sugar and honey, as you told us to!"
"What I told you was a parable," said Ngai, "and you have mistaken the
facts of it for the truth that lay beneath. I gave you the power to think,
but since you have not used it, I hereby take it away. And as a further
punishment, you will no longer have the ability to speak, for creatures that
do not think have nothing to say."
And from that day forth, only man, among all Ngai's creations, has had
the power to think and speak, for only man can pierce through the facts to
find the truth.
****
You think you know a person when you have worked with him and trained him and
guided his thinking since he was a small boy. You think you can foresee his
reactions to various situations. You think you know how his mind works.
And if the person in question has been chosen by you, selected from the
mass of his companions and groomed for something special, as young Ndemi was
selected and groomed by me to be my successor as the mundumugu -- the witch
doctor -- to our terraformed world of Kirinyaga, the one thing you think above
all else is that you possess his loyalty and his gratitude.
But even a mundumugu can be wrong.
I do not know exactly when or how it began. I had chosen Ndemi to be
my assistant when he was still a kehee -- an uncircumcized child -- and I had
worked diligently with him to prepare him for the position he would one day
inherit from me. I chose him not for his boldness, though he feared nothing,
nor for his enthusiasm, which was boundless, but rather for his intellect, for