"Mike Resnick - The Lotus and the Spear" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

curses, more even than a voice of reason in the Council of Elders: he is the
repository of all the traditions that make the Kikuyu what they are.
Some days it is difficult to be the mundumugu. When I must decide disputes,
one side will always be unhappy with me. Or when there is an illness that I cannot
cure, and I know that soon I will be telling the sufferer's family to leave him out for
the hyenas. Or when Ndemi, who will someday be the mundumugu, gives every
indication that he will not be ready to assume my duties when my body, already old
and wrinkled, reaches the point, not too long off, when it is no longer able to
function.
And, once in a long while, it is terrible to be the mundumugu, for I am presented
with a problem against which all the accumulated wisdom of the Kikuyu seems like a
reed in the wind.
Such a day begins like any other. I awake from my slumber and walk out of my
hut into my boma with my blanket wrapped around my shoulders, for though it will
soon be warm the sun has not yet removed the chill from the air. I light a fire and sit
next to it, waiting for Ndemi, who will almost certainly be late. Sometimes I marvel at
the facility of his imagination, for never has he given me the same excuse twice.
As I grow older, I have taken to chewing a qat leaf in the morning to start the
blood flowing through my body. Ndemi disapproves, for he has been taught the
uses of qat as a medicine and he knows that it is addictive. I will explain to him again
that without it I would probably be in constant pain until the sun was overhead, that
when you are as old as I am your muscles and joints do not always respond to your
commands and can fill you with agony, and he will shrug and nod his head and
forget again by the following morning.
Eventually he will arrive, my young assistant, and after he explains why he was
late today, he will take my gourds down to the river and fill them with water, and then
gather firewood and bring it to my boma. Then we will embark upon our daily
lesson, in which perhaps I will explain to him how to make an ointment out of the
pods of the acacia tree, and he will sit and try not to squirm and will demonstrate
such self-control that he may well listen to me for ten or twelve minutes before
asking when I will teach him how to turn an enemy into an insect so that he may
stamp on him.
Finally I will take him into my hut, and teach him the rudiments of my computer,
for after I am dead it will be Ndemi who will have to contact Maintenance and
request the orbital adjustments that will affect the seasons, that will bring rain to the
parched plains, that will make the days longer or shorter to give the illusion of
seasonal changes.
Then, if it is to be an ordinary day, I will fill my pouch with charms and will
begin walking through the fields, warding off any thahu, or curse, that has been
placed on them, and assuring that they will continue to yield the food we need to
survive, and if the rains have come and the land is green, perhaps I will slaughter a
goat to thank Ngai for His beneficence.
If it is not to be an ordinary day, I usually know at the outset. Perhaps there will
be hyena dung in my boma, a sure sign of a thahu, or the wind may come from the
west, whereas all good winds blow from the east.
But on the day in question, there was no wind at all, and no hyenas had been in
my boma the night before. It began like any other day. Ndemi was late — this time,
he claimed, because there was a black mamba on the path up my hill, and he had to
wait until it finally slithered off into the tall grasses — and I had just finished teaching
him the prayer for health and long life that he must recite at the birth of a new baby,