[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
It sounds like it s going to be a fun trip, Alice observed. And then, when
they were actually putting out to sea and she was on the bridge next to
Viktor, she said, Shan was asking after you.
Oh, yeah, Viktor said, concentrating on setting a course while the wind was
fair. I m sorry about that. I meant to come and see him, but how s he doing,
anyway?
Page 56
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
He s learning to talk, Alice informed him.
That s wonderful, Viktor said, guilty but pleased. Well, it s your watch. I
think I ll look around below. And then I think I ll hit the teaching
machines.
The revived talk about space travel, at least, had been an interesting
development of his leave, but on the whole it hadn t been entirely a happy
one. Viktor was beginning to worry a little about his family. His mother was
certainly working too hard, and his father . . .
Well, Pal Sorricaine wasn t the man he had been on
New Mayflower anymore. He was drinking again. It was because of the pain of
his missing leg, he said. But what Reesa said not right away, but reluctantly,
and after keeping silence for a while, and then only because she never lied to
Viktor was that the course in astrophysics was a joke. Oh, the story about
starting space travel again soon maybe was true enough; the council had voted
it a medium priority. But the real purpose of the course was simply to give
Pal Sorricaine something to do. Viktor himself had seen that the machines did
most of the real teaching. They were far more patient than Pal
Sorricaine, and fairer. Especially with the younger students who had never
studied astrophysics before. The teaching machines were not put off by teenage
sulks, or cajoled by teenage flattery.
Probably the younger ones got something out of the course, but the
others well, everybody liked Pal Sorricaine, and they were willing to go to a
little trouble to please him.
Viktor felt a small, lasting ache at the thought of his father being humored.
And he felt a certain irritation with Reesa, too. Although she had seemed
happy enough for them to spend much of his time ashore together, she hadn t
seemed particularly excited by his attentions. Nor had she tried to conceal
from him (that same damned honesty!) that there were others more attentive,
and more often around.
All in all, he was glad to be back at sea.
Even that, though, wasn t as exciting as it once had been. When Viktor had
first shipped out, as soon as he was big enough to do an adult s job,
everything had been thrillingly new. They hadn t just cruised back and forth,
as though on tracks; they had gone where, literally, no human
278
THE WORLD AT THE END OF TIME
Frederik Pohi
279
had ever been before. They visited islands that they populated with
earthworms, insects, algae, and flowering plants, as well as the seedlings
that, they hoped, would one day be great forests of oak and apple and pine.
Then they returned to those islands, a few Newmanhome years later, to seed
them with second generations of fish and birds and small mammals and a few
years after that, with a couple of pairs of foxes to keep the rabbits down,
and sheep to start earning the islands keep. He was too young to have been
involved in the spreading of trace minerals in the soils of some of the lands,
so that Earthly crops could grow, but he helped dig out the muck where
recurrent marsh flooding had drowned thousands of years of colonizing plants,
creating a sort of mulch that was almost as good as guano. He was even part of
an expedition a hundred kilometers down the coast, once, when an explorer
broke a leg in the jungle and had to be rescued from deep, ferny, swampy
tangles of Newmanhome s native vegetation.
All that was in Viktor s apprentice days. His current job was crewing one of
the giant grain ships that fed the growing city on the North Continent from
the new farms on the South.
Food for Homeport s people could be grown nearer the city and a lot was. But
clearing the tangled, ropy vegetation of that part of the North Continent was
hard work. Worse, the stuff refused to stay cleared. The principal native vine
Page 57
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
was more tenacious than crab-grass or kudzu, and harder to kill. Its root
systems went down a dozen meters and more, and the stuff was quite content to
grow up right through a field of corn or soy from the vestiges of its roots.
At some point, the leadership council decided, a new city, or a dozen of them,
would have to be planted in the hotter, wetter south. The location of their
first town, Homeport, had been chosen at long range, from probe imaging and
the hurried studies of the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl ocenkijessi.opx.pl
It sounds like it s going to be a fun trip, Alice observed. And then, when
they were actually putting out to sea and she was on the bridge next to
Viktor, she said, Shan was asking after you.
Oh, yeah, Viktor said, concentrating on setting a course while the wind was
fair. I m sorry about that. I meant to come and see him, but how s he doing,
anyway?
Page 56
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
He s learning to talk, Alice informed him.
That s wonderful, Viktor said, guilty but pleased. Well, it s your watch. I
think I ll look around below. And then I think I ll hit the teaching
machines.
The revived talk about space travel, at least, had been an interesting
development of his leave, but on the whole it hadn t been entirely a happy
one. Viktor was beginning to worry a little about his family. His mother was
certainly working too hard, and his father . . .
Well, Pal Sorricaine wasn t the man he had been on
New Mayflower anymore. He was drinking again. It was because of the pain of
his missing leg, he said. But what Reesa said not right away, but reluctantly,
and after keeping silence for a while, and then only because she never lied to
Viktor was that the course in astrophysics was a joke. Oh, the story about
starting space travel again soon maybe was true enough; the council had voted
it a medium priority. But the real purpose of the course was simply to give
Pal Sorricaine something to do. Viktor himself had seen that the machines did
most of the real teaching. They were far more patient than Pal
Sorricaine, and fairer. Especially with the younger students who had never
studied astrophysics before. The teaching machines were not put off by teenage
sulks, or cajoled by teenage flattery.
Probably the younger ones got something out of the course, but the
others well, everybody liked Pal Sorricaine, and they were willing to go to a
little trouble to please him.
Viktor felt a small, lasting ache at the thought of his father being humored.
And he felt a certain irritation with Reesa, too. Although she had seemed
happy enough for them to spend much of his time ashore together, she hadn t
seemed particularly excited by his attentions. Nor had she tried to conceal
from him (that same damned honesty!) that there were others more attentive,
and more often around.
All in all, he was glad to be back at sea.
Even that, though, wasn t as exciting as it once had been. When Viktor had
first shipped out, as soon as he was big enough to do an adult s job,
everything had been thrillingly new. They hadn t just cruised back and forth,
as though on tracks; they had gone where, literally, no human
278
THE WORLD AT THE END OF TIME
Frederik Pohi
279
had ever been before. They visited islands that they populated with
earthworms, insects, algae, and flowering plants, as well as the seedlings
that, they hoped, would one day be great forests of oak and apple and pine.
Then they returned to those islands, a few Newmanhome years later, to seed
them with second generations of fish and birds and small mammals and a few
years after that, with a couple of pairs of foxes to keep the rabbits down,
and sheep to start earning the islands keep. He was too young to have been
involved in the spreading of trace minerals in the soils of some of the lands,
so that Earthly crops could grow, but he helped dig out the muck where
recurrent marsh flooding had drowned thousands of years of colonizing plants,
creating a sort of mulch that was almost as good as guano. He was even part of
an expedition a hundred kilometers down the coast, once, when an explorer
broke a leg in the jungle and had to be rescued from deep, ferny, swampy
tangles of Newmanhome s native vegetation.
All that was in Viktor s apprentice days. His current job was crewing one of
the giant grain ships that fed the growing city on the North Continent from
the new farms on the South.
Food for Homeport s people could be grown nearer the city and a lot was. But
clearing the tangled, ropy vegetation of that part of the North Continent was
hard work. Worse, the stuff refused to stay cleared. The principal native vine
Page 57
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
was more tenacious than crab-grass or kudzu, and harder to kill. Its root
systems went down a dozen meters and more, and the stuff was quite content to
grow up right through a field of corn or soy from the vestiges of its roots.
At some point, the leadership council decided, a new city, or a dozen of them,
would have to be planted in the hotter, wetter south. The location of their
first town, Homeport, had been chosen at long range, from probe imaging and
the hurried studies of the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]