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

"And Ngala and Keino and Njupo felt the same way?" I said.
"Yes."
"Why did they kill themselves?" I asked. "It is written in our charter that anyone
who wishes to leave Kirinyaga may do so. They need only have walked to that area
known as Haven, and a Maintenance ship would have picked them up and taken
them anywhere they wished to go."
"You still do not understand, do you?" he said.
 "No, I do not," I admitted. "Enlighten me."
"Men have reached the stars, Koriba," he said. "They have medicines and
machines and weapons that are beyond our imagining. They live in cities that dwarf
our village." He paused again. "But here on Kirinyaga, we live the life that we lived
before the Europeans came and brought the forerunners of such things with them.
We live as the Kikuyu have always lived, as you say we were meant to live. How,
then, can we go back to Kenya? What could we do? How would we feed and shelter
ourselves? The Europeans changed us from Kikuyu into Kenyans once before, but it
took many years and many generations. You and the others who created Kirinyaga
meant no harm, you only did what you thought was right, but you have seen to it that
I can never become a Kenyan. I am too old, and I am starting too far behind."
"What about the other young men of your colony?" I asked. "How do they
feel?"
"Most of them are content, as I said. And why shouldn't they be? The hardest
work they were ever forced to do was to nurse at their mothers' breasts." He looked
into my eyes. "You have offered them a dream, and they have accepted it."
"And what is your dream, Murumbi?"
He shrugged. "I have ceased to dream."
"I do not believe that," I said. "Every man has a dream. What would it take to
make you content?"
"Truly?"
"Truly."
"Let the Maasai come to Kirinyaga, or the Wakamba, or the Luo," he said. "I
was trained to be a warrior. Therefore, give me a reason to carry my spear, to walk
unfettered ahead of my wife when her back is bent under her burden. Let us raid
their shambas and carry off their women and their cattle, and let them try to do the
same for us. Do not give us new land to farm when we are old enough; let us
compete for it with the other tribes."
"What you are asking for is war," I said.
"No," replied Murumbi. "What I am asking for is meaning. You mentioned my
wife and children. I cannot afford the bride price for a wife, nor will I be able to
unless my father dies and leaves me his cattle, or asks me to move back to his
shamba." He stared at me with reproachful eyes. "Don't you realize that the only
result is to make me wish for his charity or his death? It is better far to steal women
from the Maasai."
"That is out of the question," I said. "Kirinyaga was created for the Kikuyu, as
was the original Kirinyaga in Kenya."
"I know that is what we believe, just as the Maasai believe that Ngai created
Kilimanjaro for them," said Murumbi. "But I have been thinking about it for many
days, and do you know what I believe? I believe that the Kikuyu and Maasai were
created for each other, for when we lived side by side in Kenya, each of us gave
meaning and purpose to the other."
"That is because you are not aware of Kenya's history," I said. "The Maasai