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Автор Майкл Коуни
Michael Coney
Cat Karina
One
The Song of Earth
When everything else had run down, we will still have the legends of Old Earth.
There is a giant computer which straddles the world. It has its roots deep in the Fifty-second Millennium; that so‑distant past when Man discovered electricity. It walked through history hand‑in-hand with Man; it saw the building of the first Domes, it survived the reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field, it watched the Age of Resurgence, it fought Man’s wars for him and even, in the Domes, lived his life for him. It became so powerful that it was able to observe practically everything that happened on Earth and, from this, project what was going to happen in the future — or the If along, as it is more correctly called. Now, in these Dying Years, the computer is still there, still observing, thinking and predicting, in countless solar-powered centers all over Earth.
It is called the Rainbow.
I am called Alan-Blue‑Cloud. In a way I am the Rainbow’s interpreter. I am one of the few remaining beings who is able to operate a terminal, and I use this ability to draw true stories out of the computer; stories of True Humans and Specialists, of aliens and Bale Wolves and the sad neotenites known cruelly as Blubbers.
But true stories do not give the whole picture. During the later years of Earth people became dissatisfied with bare facts, which are always a little dull when compared with fictions and legends. So, when it seemed that Mankind was doomed forever to listen to the Truth, because that was all he could get out of his terminals and cassettes, an old art-form was rediscovered.
And Romance returned to Earth.
It started with a few bards and minstrels — I will shortly tell you about one named Enriques de Jai’a. They ignored the Rainbow and they used their eyes and ears, listened to rumors and legends and dying old men.
And they used their imagination, and their essential humanness. With these ingredients they created a whole new history of Mankind; a tapestry of events which was passed on by word of mouth — and so could never become dull, inflexible, or accurate.It is called the Song of Earth.
HERE BEGINS THAT PART OF THE SONG OF EARTH KNOWN TO MEN AS «THE GIRL BORN TO GREATNESS»
Where a young felina
meets a wise woman,
hears of her future
and meets a young True Human whose name
will be linked with hers in the Ifalong.
Two
The World of Karina
Instantly, Karina knew her leg was broken.
Her body swung downwards and she grabbed the log with her right arm, checking her fall. As she hung there, the pain began. The dark night brightened with her pain, so that for a moment she could see nothing except a blinding redness, flaring like a furnace from a core of agony just below her knee.
She made no sound. Felinas don’t cry.
So they were tears of pain in her eyes, not weakness. She blinked and her vision cleared, and she wriggled carefully, working her way onto the log until she lay along it, her foot trapped in the supporting crutch, her legs outstretched. She saw the moon reflected from the long, smooth timber rail of the sailway and, far in the distance on top of a hill, the bright glow of a signal tower. As she watched, the signal blinked with moonlight.
