Frank Herbert Destination Vo

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

agreed on." She kept her attention on the teacup.
"We have?" He held his tone neutral, not giving her any help.
"Human has less to do with anatomy than with a state of mind," she said.
"Intelligence, compassion . . . humor, the need to share . . ."
"And build hierarchies?" he asked.
"I guess that, too." She met his gaze. "Mermen are very vain about their
bodies. We're proud that we've stayed close to the original norm."
"Is that why you showed me the scar on your back?"
"I wanted you to see that I'm not perfect."
Page 69
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"That you're deformed, like me?"
"You're not making this very easy for me, Ward."
"You, or yours, have the luxury of choice in their mutations. Genetics, of
course, adds a particularly bitter edge to the whole thing. Your scar is not
.
. . 'like me,' but one of your freckles is. Your freckles have a much more
pleasant quality to them than this." He tapped the neck support. "But I'm
not complaining," he assured her, "just being pedantic. Now what is it that
I'm not making easy for you?" Keel sat back, pleased for once about those
tedious years behind the bench and some of the lessons those years had taught
him.
She stared into his eyes, and he saw fear in her expression.
"There are Mermen fanatics who want to wipe every . . . Mute off the face of
this planet."
The flat abruptness of her statement, the matter-of-fact tone caught him off
guard. Lives were precious to Islanders and Mermen, this he'd witnessed for
himself innumerable times during his many years. The idea of deliberate
killing nauseated him, as it did most Pandorans. His own judgments against
lethal deviants had brought him much isolation in his lifetime, but the law
required that someone pass judgment on people, blobs and . . . things . . .
He could never decree termination without suffering acute personal agony.
But to wipe out hundreds of hundreds of thousands . . . He returned Ale's
stare, thinking about her recent behavior -- the food cooked by her own hands,
the sharing of these remarkable quarters. And, of course, the scar.
I'm on your side, she was trying to say. He felt the planning behind her
actions, but there was more to it, he thought, than callous outlines and
assignments. Otherwise, why had she been embarrassed? She was trying to win
him over to some personal viewpoint. What viewpoint?
"Why?" he asked.
She drew in a deep breath. The simplicity of his response obviously surprised
her.
"Ignorance," she said.
"And how does this ignorance manifest itself?"
Her nervous fingers flip-flip-flipped the corner of her napkin. Her eyes
sought out a stain on the tabletop and fixed themselves there.
"I am a child before you," Keel said. "Explain this to me. 'Wipe every Mute
off the face of this planet.' You know how I feel about the preservation of
human life."
"As I feel, Ward. Believe me, please."
"Then explain it to this child and we can get started defeating it: Why would
someone wish death to so many of us just because we're . . . extranormal?" He
had never been quite so conscious of his smear of a nose, the eyes set so wide
on his temples that his ears picked up the fine liquid click-click of every
blink.
"It's political," she said. "There's power in appealing to base responses.
And there are problems over the kelp situation."
"What kelp situation?" His voice sounded toneless in his own ears, far away
and
. . . yes, afraid. Wipe every Mute off the face of this planet.
"Do you feel up to a tour?" she asked. She glanced at the plaz beside them.
Ward looked out at the undersea view. "Out there?"
"No," she said, "not out there. There's been a wavewall topside and we've got
all our crews reclaiming some ground we've lost."
His eyes strained to focus forward on her mouth. Somehow, he didn't believe
anyone's mouth could be so casual about a wavewall.
"The Islands?" He swallowed. "How bad was the damage?"
Page 70
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Minimal, Ward. To our knowledge, no fatalities. Wave-walls may very well be
a thing of the past."
"I don't understand."
"This wavewall was smaller than many of the winter storms you survive every
year. We've built a series of networks of exposed land. Land above the sea.
Someday, they will be islands . . . real islands fixed to the planet, not
drifting willy-nilly. And some of them, I think, will be continents."
Land, he thought, and his stomach lurched. Land means shallows. An Island
could bottom out in shallow water. An ultimate disaster, in the vernacular of
historians, but she was talking about voluntarily increasing the risk of an
Islander's worst fear.
"How much exposed land?" he asked, trying to maintain a level tone.
"Not very much, but it's a beginning."
"But it would take forever to . . ."
"A long time, Ward, but not forever. We've been at it for generations. And
lately we've had some help. It's getting done in our lifetime, doesn't that
excite you?"
"What does this have to do with the kelp?" He felt the need to resist her
obvious attempts to mesmerize him.
"The kelp is the key," she said, "just as people -- Islanders and Mermen --
have said all along. With the kelp and a few well-placed artificial barriers,
we can control the sea currents. All of them."
Control, he thought. That's the Merman way of it. He doubted they could
control the seas, but if they could manipulate currents, they could manipulate
Island movement.
How much control? he wondered*
"We're in a two-sun system," he said. "The gravitational distortions
guarantee wavewalls, earthquakes . . ."
"Not when the kelp was in its prime, Ward. And now there's enough of it to
make a difference. You'll see. And currents should begin an aggrading action
now --
dropping sediment -- rather than degrading."
Degrading, he thought. He looked at Ale's beauty. Did she even know the
meaning of the word? A technical understanding, an engineering approach was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Linki