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

someone else."
 "Really?"
I nodded. "Take these young men who have killed themselves. The idea of
suicide is new to them, but they are not the first to think of it. We have all thought of
killing ourselves at one time or another. What I must learn is not why they have
finally thought of it, but why they have not rejected the thought, why it has become
attractive to them."
"And then you will use your magic to make it unattractive?" asked Ndemi.
"Yes."
"Will you boil poisonous serpents in a pot with the blood a freshly-killed
Zebra?" he asked eagerly.
"You are a very bloodthirsty boy," I said.
"A thahu that can kill four young men requires powerful magic," he replied.
"Sometimes just a word or a sentence is all the magic one needs."
"But if you need more..."
I sighed deeply. "If I need more, I will tell you what animals to slay for me."
He leaped to his feet, picked up his slender wooden spear, and made stabbing
motions in the air. "I will become the most famous hunter ever!" he shouted happily.
"My children and grandchildren will sing songs of praise to me, and the animals of
the field will tremble at my approach!"
"But before that happy day arrives," I said, "there is still the water to be fetched
and the firewood to be gathered."
"Yes, Koriba," he said. He picked up my water gourds and began walking down
the hill, and I could tell that in his imagination he was still confronting charging
buffaloes and hurling his spear straight and true to the mark.
###


I gave Ndemi his morning lesson — the prayer for the dead seemed a proper
topic — and then went down to the village to comfort Ngala's parents. His mother,
Liswa, was inconsolable. He had been her first-born, and it was all but impossible to
get her to stop wailing the death chant long enough for me to express my sorrow.
Kibanja, Ngala's father, stood off by himself, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Why would he do such a thing, Koriba?" he asked as I approached him.
"I do not know," I answered.
"He was the boldest of boys," he continued. "Even you did not frighten him."
He stopped suddenly for fear that he had given offense.
"He was very bold," I agreed. "And bright."
"That is true," agreed Kibanja. "Even when the other boys would lie up beneath
the shade trees during the heat of the day, my Ngala was always finding new games
to play, new things to do." He looked at me through tortured eyes. "And now my
only son is dead, and I do not know why."
"I will find out," I told him.
"It is wrong, Koriba," he continued. "It is against the nature of things. I was
meant to die first, and then all that I own — my shamba, my cattle, my goats —
everything would have been his." He tried to hold back his tears, for although the
Kikuyu are not as arrogant as the Maasai, our men do not like to display such
emotions in public. But the tears came anyway, making moist paths down his dusty
cheeks before falling onto the dirt. "He did not even live long enough to take a wife
and present her with a son. All that he was has died with him. What sin did he