"Robert F. Young - The Last Yggdrasill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

Extraterrestrial Lands—MOEL—for their bright brains as well as their green thumbs. All of them were
bachelors in agriculture; many of them had degrees in other fields as well. Westermeyer, for example, had
a doctor's degree in political science. Westermeyer was the head of the Co-op.
He was with the two other members of the crew and the foreman when Strong entered the
corrugated-steel shed on the village's outskirts that the Co-op had partially emptied of grain machinery to
provide room for the airhauler. With Peake and Bluesky and Matthews. Peake and Bluesky had been
working on the airhauler all day, reassembling it, oiling and adjusting its mechanical parts, and Matthews
had come around to check it out. Westermeyer had come with her. Matthews had inherited the
tree-removal company from her husband and ran the show on stage rather than from afar. It was a tiny
company that belied the corporate-sounding name her husband had given it: TreeCo. She was a thin,
wiry woman in her late sixties who wore her undyed graying hair in a ragged bob. In the field, she
dressed the same way her three-man tree crew did—in plaid shirt, denim breeches, and calf-high boots.
Westermeyer was short, portly, balding, and somewhere in his fifties. Standing next to him, waiting for
Matthews to finish her inspection, Bluesky and Peake had the aspect of two tall sticks of wood.
"How's the tree look, Tom?" Bluesky asked.
"Big," Strong said.
"Hell, we knew that," Peake said. The long visor of his cap added to the pronounced angles of his
face but did not rob them of their symmetry. "Is that all you learned after gawking at it all afternoon?"
"You know, Mr. Strong," Westermeyer said, "I admire someone with the guts to do what you're
going to do. I wouldn't climb up into that damned tree for all the tea there used to be in China!"
"I happened to draw the long blade of grass is all," Strong said. "We always draw lots before a
felling," he explained, "only instead of using matches or straws, we use blades of grass."
"It seems to me that by letting chance decide which of you is going to risk his neck, one of you is
bound to do more than his share of the risking."
"Eventually it averages out."
"It still strikes me as being unfair."
"They draw to win, Doctor Westermeyer," Matthews said from the airhauler's rear hatchway where
she was inspecting the winch. "The man in the tree gets double time."
"Oh. Well, that does throw a somewhat different light on the matter. I can't begin to tell you,"
Westermeyer went on, "what a relief it's going to be to all of us here in Bigtree to get rid of that damn
tree!"
"You ever hear of the buffalo, Doctor Westermeyer?" Bluesky asked.
"I read about them."
"Once there were fifty million of them. When the white man got done slaughtering them there were
only five hundred."
"I'm afraid I don't get the connection."
"Fifty million. Think of that."
"Christ, don't start it with that buffalo shit again!" Peake said.
"I didn't start it—the white man did."
"Knock it off, Bluesky," Matthews said.
Bluesky shrugged. "I only mentioned."
Strong said, "I'm going to use the long spurs."
Matthews nodded. "They're safest." She turned the winch motor on, listened for a moment to its
smooth hmhmhm, then turned it back off. She stepped down from the hatchway. "We'll start with the
small tongs," she said. "They'll do for most of the overstory."
The tongs were piled in one corner of the shed along with the rest of the equipment. Strong looked at
them. They were made of lightweight ultrasteel, and there were three pairs. The largest had teeth as long
as those of Tyrannosaurus rex. He ran his eyes over the airhaus ler. Its size belied the fact that when
disassembled it fitted into a twelve-by-twelve shipping crate. With its airfloat flexitanks inflated it would
look larger yet. At the moment its flutter-wings were folded back along its sides. Their function was to