Niven, Larry - The Legacy of Heorot

VIP免费

2024-12-02 0 0 543.77KB 161 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Niven,%20Larry%20-%20The%20Legacy%20of%20Heorot.txt

Thou must now look to the needs of the nation;

Here dwell I no longer for Destiny calleth me!

Bid thou my warriors after my funeral pyre

Build me a burial-cairn high on the sea-cliff's head;

So that the wayfarers Beowulf's Barrow

Henceforth shall name it.

Thou art the last of all the kindred of Wagmund!

Wyrd has swept all my kin all the brave chiefs away!

Now I must follow them!

Beowulf, King of the Geats

==================

The Legacy of Heorot

Chapter 1

CAMELOT

They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the nuts work loose.

KIPLING, "The Sons of Martha"

"Cadzie! Wait up!"

Cadmann Weyland chuckled to himself and dug his heels into the slope, slowing his descent.

He politely busied himself, adjusting the rangefinder on his camera. After months on Avalon he

still found the shadows too sharp and the sunlight too blue, subtle things, noticed only when he

used familiar equipment like the camera.

The Colony sprang into high relief, and the recorder in his backpack vibrated noiselessly to

make a holotape recording of the network of buildings and plowed fields and animal pens that

stretched out in the valley below. The Colony was ten kilometers farther on, but the

electronically enhanced lenses brought its low buildings close enough to touch.

The image jolted as Sylvia slid into him. She caught herself with a palm against his back.

"Ouch. Sorry."

"Here." He handed her the camera. "See what we've built." She gratefully accepted the excuse

to rest. Her short brown hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat, and her freckled cheeks

were flushed.

Six miles, downhill, and Sylvia was tiring. In the last hour she'd found a dozen reasons to

stop. Stones in her walking shoes. Burs inside her blouse.

Cadmann chuckled inwardly. The Colony's biologist was tough, and as stubborn about admitting

fatigue as he. She's also three months pregnant. Won't admit there are real differences between

the sexes. So be it.

Ernst loped down the slope. A brace of the large silver fishlike creatures the Colony had

dubbed "samlon" slapped against his muscular back. His grin split his broad face from ear to jug

ear. "Tiring out, Sylvia! You ought to work out! Exercise! I can show you."

Sylvia laughed. "Not right now, thanks, Ernst."

"Later."

Poor bastard. Ernst Cohen had been the solar system's leading authority on reproductive

biology, and brighter than hell. You could watch it at cocktail parties: everyone else talking,

and suddenly Ernst would say maybe two sentences, and half the room would go silent as the rest of

them digested the implications. That was ten light-years ago. Ernst had come out of frozen sleep

with the mind of a child.

Sylvia scanned the valley, gave a sigh of pleasure.

"Terrific shot, isn't it?" Cadmann's voice, ordinarily a hoarse rumbling sound, was quietly

thoughtful. "National Geographic will love it." He squatted next to her. "Are you all right?"

"Just fine," she murmured. She turned, warming him with her smile. "But I'll be happy to get

back home."

She was almost twenty years younger than he. Sylvia was all quick wit and golden eyes that

glowed with life above a galaxy of freckles. Her pregnancy changed nothing. It was wonderful, it

was frustrating: being with her made him forget the years and the aches. It's the eyes. She's

plain except for the eyes. God help me.

The pass they traversed was at the base of the tallest mountain on the island. The highest of

file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Niven,%20Larry%20-%20The%20Legacy%20of%20Heorot.txt (1 of 161) [1/19/03 6:09:45 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Niven,%20Larry%20-%20The%20Legacy%20of%20Heorot.txt

its double peaks was just above thirty-two hundred meters. Both were shrouded with mist. The

delicate bat shapes of the pterodons glided in and out of the cloud cover with barely a flutter of

their membranous wings. Ernst stared up at them, his face a mask of puzzled concentration. What

would Dr. Ernst Cohen have made of them? They aren't really pterodons. There are other oddities.

He'd have loved it here--

"They woke him twice," Sylvia said. "Maybe if they'd just left him cold--"

"We did need him. We did," Cadmann said. But Ernst wasn't crew. He could have slept through,

but they had a problem with one bank of frozen embryos and woke him, and he'd solved that, and

they'd chilled him again, and then there was another problem--And as good a man as ever lived

follows me around to carry samples. Son of a bitch--

A square kilometer of plastic-coated solar cells glittered silver on the hills above the

Colony. Today's sunshine meant independence from the fission power plants of the landers. An

actual fusion plant would be constructed within the next four months. Then the Colony would be

fully established, and the spread of man across the face of Tau Ceti Four could really begin.

--Across Camelot, anyway. Eighty kilometers of stormy ocean separated the island from the

mainland. A New Guinea-sized island was quite ambitious enough for humankind's first interstellar

colony. Zack had known what he was doing. Isolate the problems . . .

So where were the problems?

"Snow up there," Cadmann said, shading his eyes as he gazed up into the eternal clouds at the

top. Skis. We didn't bring skis. We have plastics. Carlos can make me a pair of skis.

Sylvia handed him back his camera. Voice carefully neutral, she said, "You don't have to go to

the continent, Cadmann. There's plenty for you to do around the camp."

"Nothing that any other able body couldn't do."

"You're not a geologist. You'd be doing grunt work anyway." She looked down at him, sighed in

exasperation and gave him her hand for balance as he stood. "Do you just want to go hunting

dinosaurs?"

"Sure! What boy doesn't want to bag a brontosaurus?" He slipped the camera back into its

holster at his side. "Sometimes I wish we'd brought fetuses for a kodiak, or a few mountain lions

. . ."

He was smiling as he said it, but Sylvia wondered.

Cadmann brushed his hand through thick black hair. There was no gray in it, but his face was

sun-cured leather. His body was as young as a daily hour of intensive exercise could make it. He

could remember when he hadn't needed regular exercise to maintain the natural tone. Now, at the

adjusted age of forty-two, he was seriously considering nudging that up to an hour and a half. I'm

slowing down, he thought. She's carrying another man's baby, and I'd rather be with her than . . .

Mary Ann Eisenhower? He thought of four or five women who had made their intentions clear. Phyllis

McAndrews. Jean Patterson, willowy blond agronomist rumored to give the best massage on the

planet. He just wasn't interested. Time wounds all heels. The glands must be drying up.

Sylvia grinned back. "Only real gentlemen refuse to notice when a lady is slowing them down."

Ernst stood carefully out of earshot. His intelligence was gone, but not his manners. She jerked

her thumb at the pair of freshly caught silver-and-black torpedo shapes hanging over Ernst's back.

Fifteen and twenty pounds, at a guess. One still gaped; the gills still fluttered, too far back on

its body . . . they didn't look that much like earthly salmon, but no other creature of Earth fit

either . . . "Tell you what. I'll fix dinner tonight. Everybody to the beach for a samlon roast."

She linked her arm with Cadmann's as they marched down the side of the hill. He grinned

maliciously. "Are you sure Terry won't mind that?"

"Oh, come now. I'm just a poor pregnant lady biologist who appreciates the presence of a

strong man--and Terry's known you for years."

"I may not be as safe as you think."

She snorted. "Fat chance. When I'm sure you want my body and not my mind, I'll faint."

He looked at her appraisingly. "Which way will you fall?"

"Hush."

They laughed. The sun shone more brightly than usual.

"Golden fields. Silver rivers."

Cadmann laughed. "I suppose. I see a year-round water supply and fertile croplands."

"You would."

Somebody 'd better.

The stream flowed past the camp and over the bluff above Miskatonic River, the greatest body

of running water on the island. Eight kilometers to the south the grasslands ended in a burnt,

blackened semicircle of firebreak and beyond that the crest of giant brambles began. The colonists

had chosen a beautiful place to start a new world, lovely enough to make him feel . . . almost at

file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Niven,%20Larry%20-%20The%20Legacy%20of%20Heorot.txt (2 of 161) [1/19/03 6:09:45 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Niven,%20Larry%20-%20The%20Legacy%20of%20Heorot.txt

peace. Times like this confused him. It was a fight not to shut down his thoughts and find some

project totally involving, and preferably a little risky.

Slender fingers dug into his arm. "Hey, big guy. Don't go brooding on me. This was supposed to

be our walk day. Stay with me for a while, hmm?" He was still quiet. "Tau Ceti Four. Avalon." She

rolled the words over her tongue.

"It's a good name."

"But?"

"Don't know."

"Not poetic enough?"

He helped her over a rock. It took effort to focus on the game she was inviting him to play.

"I've read poetry--"

"Kipling." She laughed. "It's all right. I know you're better read than me. And I'll keep your

secret. I don't know, Avalon's all right. But there are others. Beautiful, exciting places from

history, or legend. Shangri-La, Babylon . . ."

"Xanadu?"

"Sure. Pellinore."

He shook his head. "You must mean Pellucidar. Pellinore was a king. One of Arthur's Knights of

the Round Table."

"Well . . . maybe so. But I don't mean Pellucidar, either. There aren't really any predators

on the island. Except for the turkeys and other critters we've seeded, there just isn't a damn

thing bigger than an insect. Even the plant life. Low grass and thorn trees. It's like a blank

slate. Or a park. Cadmann--"

He asked, "Does that bother you?"

"Well, the worst we can do is mess up one island. It isn't like we'd turned all those Earth

creatures loose on the mainland."

"I meant too perfect. Why do you care?"

"Well--"

Ernst ran up, pointing. "Birds. Big Birds." Two of the fan-winged shapes swooped past. Cadmann

watched as they circled out over the plain, then vanished in the mist that reached halfway down

the face of Mucking Great Mountain. "Nest there?" Ernst asked. "Why there?" He frowned again.

"See? We do have company."

"The pterodons? They're way more frightened of us than we are of them. And the biggest of them

is hardly strong enough to carry off a good-sized samlon, let alone a sheep."

"How about a baby?" he asked.

She took it seriously. "I don't think so. To tell you the truth, I haven't seen anything much

bigger than a sea gull, and that bothers me. The ecology is just too damned simple. Take out the

pterodons and all you've got is small insects and these big local fish."

"The samlon."

"Of course they aren't really fish. What with the trout and the catfish and the turkeys, we've

added more animals than we found. Spooky." Sylvia turned thoughtful as they picked their way down

a steep slope. "You know, there's something funny about the pterodons."

"What's that?"

"Well, remember the one we saw hunting samlon in the pool?"

"Sure. Reminded me of albatross in the South Pacific." Sailing aboard Ariadne with a fair wind

north, a million years--no, not a million years, but a lot more than a million miles ago. With

luck we'll build schooners here before I'm dead.

"Didn't that look funny to you? I can't quite put my finger on it, but it reminded me of an

old Walt Disney nature film, with the action run in reverse, to be comical."

"Reverse?"

"A bird hits the water hard and fast, makes its grab, then takes off at its leisure. That bird

hit the water slow and took off fast, almost as if . . ." She frowned, shaking her head like

someone trying to rattle cobwebs off a thought. "Never mind, I'm trying to force something."

"Or see something that isn't there. You'd love to put some mystery into this system."

"How'd you get to know me so well?"

"I always understand other men's women."

"Ah."

Without warning Cadmann began to run, pulling Sylvia down the last twenty meters of slope. She

skidded on her heels to slow herself, nonplused but exhilarated by his sudden burst of energy.

He glanced back and realized that Ernst was running too. Ernst looked frightened. "Hold up,"

Cadmann said. He called, "Ernst! It's okay, Ernst. We're just running for fun. Want to race?"

Ernst's brow cleared; his run slowed. "Race. Sure, Cadmann. Start even?"

file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Niven,%20Larry%20-%20The%20Legacy%20of%20Heorot.txt (3 of 161) [1/19/03 6:09:45 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Niven,%20Larry%20-%20The%20Legacy%20of%20Heorot.txt

They lined up, gave Sylvia a hundred meters of head start, and ran.

Even this far out from the camp, there was a blackened strip of road for them to follow. It

was brittle and glassy.

"Your road," Ernst shouted. "Yours."

"Sure." It was. The last time they really needed me. Ernst led with the weed burner, a

converted military flame-thrower. Cadmann had driven the bulldozer, wishing all along that there

had been enough fuel to use a landing craft. That would have made a road! Hover across the ground

on the Minerva, fuse the rock forever--Even so, he felt pride when he scanned the kilometers of

dark ribbon he had created with his own sweat and skill. He bent to look closer at the surface of

the road. A few tiny bluish sprigs were nosing their way out of the ground.

Sylvia came up puffing. "Maybe we should sow the ground with salt before you make your next

pass."

"I'm not even sure it matters. Not much of the heavy machinery comes out this far."

Thin clouds of dust raised by the tractors puffed like tiny fires in the distant fields. The

crops had been established. Now they must be expanded. Prepare the ground for new crop tests, lay

away grain and seeds against the possibility of a bad year.

The Colony was a success. Zack Moscowitz--administrator, all-around good guy, everybody loves

Zack--Zack had done it. The Colony was a success, and nothing short of disaster could stop its

expansion across the island and eventually over all of Tau Ceti Four.

Agriculture. Food, vitamins, some comforts. We have those, and now comes prospecting. Iron ore

had been discovered on the island itself, and the orbiting laboratory had found what looked very

much like a deposit of pitchblende. It was deep in the interior of the continent, across thousands

of kilometers of ocean and through badlands--but it was there.

Iron and uranium. The foundations of empire. "The sons of Martha."

"Eh?" Sylvia giggled.

"Kipling. Sorry. Politicians are the sons of Mary. Then there are the others, the ones who

keep civilization going. 'They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the

nuts work loose--' Oh, never mind."

Today seemed more tolerable, more like the First Days, when Cadmann and Sylvia and the other

First Ones thundered down from the heavens in their winged landing craft. All the gliding

characteristics of a brick. We left a line of fire and thunder that circled the sky. A hundred and

fifty colonists waited in orbit, cold as corpses and no more active, while we scanned a strange

planet from end to end, and chose the place to set our city, and set our feet in the rock of this

world.

The National Geographic Society's probes told a lot. Tau Ceti Four had oxygen and water and

nitrogen. The planet was cooler than Earth, so the temperate zones were smaller, but a lot of the

planet was livable. They'd known there would be plants, and guessed at animals. Humans could live

there--or could they? Probably, but the only certainty would come when people tried it.

Civilization on Earth was rich, comfortable, satisfying; and crowded, and dull. Forty million

university graduates had volunteered for the expedition. The first winnowing had eliminated

compulsive volunteers, flakes whose horoscopes had told them to find a different sky, candidates

with allergies or other handicaps, geniuses who couldn't tolerate cramped conditions or human

company or people who gave orders . . . Perhaps a hundred thousand had been seriously considered;

and two hundred had set forth to conquer Tau Ceti Four. Eight had died along the way.

No world would ever be tamed by robots. It took men, crossing space, some awake, some chilled,

a hundred years across space--The early days were good days. We were comrades in an untamed land.

Then we found Paradise, and they don't need me at all. They need Sylvia. They need the

engineers, and the tractor drivers, and, God help us, the administrators and bean counters, but

never a soldier.

Sheep and calves roamed the pastures now. Colts grazed. Soon the camp would be full of

children, alive with their happy wet smells and sounds; and what need had those for Colonel

Cadmann Weyland, United Nations Peacekeeping Force (Ret.)?

Animals . . . a distant lowing snapped Cadmann out of his reverie. They were nearing the rows

of moist, furrowed earth. Other crews had burnt the ground, spitting jellied fuel from backpack

flame-throwers to clear the soil of underbrush without glazing it into slag. The charred dirt had

long since been plowed under to prepare for seeding. The ground was very fertile, needing only

minor nitrate supplementation to provide a healthy medium for their crops.

In the distance one of the farmers slowed his tractor to wave to them, and Ernst lifted two

samlon in triumphant greeting. Further ahead Cadmann knew that there were colts and calves, still

far too young to manage the plows that would be fashioned for them. It was an unusual combination--

a meld of high technology and muscle-intensive agriculture. In an emergency, the Colony could fall

file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Niven,%20Larry%20-%20The%20Legacy%20of%20Heorot.txt (4 of 161) [1/19/03 6:09:45 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Niven,%20Larry%20-%20The%20Legacy%20of%20Heorot.txt

back on the most ancient and reliable means of production.

There were rows of wheat and spinach and soybeans, and in the mist-filtered glare of Tau Ceti

their leaves and stalks glistened healthily. At the base of the rows ran the irrigation ditches,

fed by the stream that passed under the low bridge just ahead, flowing past the camp and over the

edge of the bluff to join the Miskatonic River.

The sounds of the main camp drifted to them. The hum of light machinery, the crackle of

laughter and the whining burr of saws and lathes working wood and metal.

The animal pens were on the outskirts of the main camp. Dogs and pigs had their own pens, the

horses a well-fenced running space. The chickens were cooped near the machine shop, closer in to

the main compound.

Cadmann stopped to examine the wire surrounding the pens. His face taughtened into a frown.

Their "hot wire" wasn't even warm; the power had been switched off months before. The barbed wire

beyond that was down in three places that he could see. He scraped at a brownish patch of rust

with his thumbnail.

"Let it go," Sylvia chided.

"Look at this." His voice was flat with disgust. "The strands are slack, and the power line is

broken. Doesn't anybody give a damn anymore? We haven't been here long enough to get this lazy."

"Cad--" Sylvia's pale slender fingers covered his, prying them away from the strand. She

gripped his hand tightly.

"Look, I know I keep getting outvoted, and I can live with that." He was mortified to hear the

petulance creeping into his voice, to see the maternal concern softening her eyes. "Listen. You

keep telling me that there are things about this island that bother you. We've only got one shot

at this. Nobody's going home, and no one's sending any reinforcements. It only makes sense to be a

little paranoid. That's why we picked an island, isn't it? To localize the dangers?"

She squeezed his arm. "I can't change your mind, so I'll try not to want to. Listen. Why make

a big thing about it? Why not just fix the fence yourself?"

"Sounds good."

"Good. I'll send for you when we're ready for the barbecue."

Just before they took the last turn into town, Cadmann looked back at the farmers and felt a

brief pang of jealousy. They, in wresting victory from the soil, were the true hunters, the true

warriors. Ultimately their efforts would determine the future of the fledgling community.

The sun was warm, but far warmer was Sylvia's hand against his arm.

The community had grown in a strangely organic manner; the first crewmembers to build their

individual prefab huts had built them close together within the defensive perimeter.

Perimeters. Three rings. Electric fence, minefield, barbed wire. It made sense at the time.

Cadmann's folly.

And one of these days they'll make me go dig up the mines. No enemies. No dangers. Nothing.

And all that fucking work to build fences.

Most of the colonists had only been awake for eight months, and already they were beginning to

get sloppy.

As they had been awakened and shuttled down, the camp expanded, filling the defensive

compound, then spreading outside it. From above, the Colony looked like a spiral nebula or a conch

shell sliced sideways. Cadmann's home was at the center.

The colonists outside the fence had more room, larger lots--but their location showed their

status. Colonists. They were not among the First Ones. Everyone on Avalon was equal, but some were

more equal than others. The First Ones had landed four months earlier and had social status--at

least those who hadn't wasted time and effort building needless fences and mine fields had status.

The muffled whirr of a power saw grew louder, and the dry smell of sawdust more distinct, as

Cadmann wove his way through the narrow streets that divided off the flat-roofed houses and foam-

sprayed prestructured domes. Some of the domes had been left in their original tan. Others were

painted, some with a kaleidoscope of colors. Here and there were strikingly realistic murals. We

have a lot of talent here. All kinds. Speaking of which--The saw changed pitch as Carlos Martinez

spotted Cadmann and lifted a hand in greeting.

Carlos's dark, lean body glistened with perspiration as he glided the saw over the planks. The

thorn trees at the perimeter of the clearing provided a generous supply of wood, but it was knotty

and coarsely grained. Only a master craftsman like Carlos could have made anything but firewood of

it, and the carpenter was deliciously aware of his valued position.

Half the Colony's dwellings had a table or bed frame by Carlos. It was doubtful that he would

ever have to take his rotation in the field to earn his share of the crop.

"Cadmann! Mi amigo." Carlos wiped his brow and extended a sweaty palm that Cadmann shook

file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Niven,%20Larry%20-%20The%20Legacy%20of%20Heorot.txt (5 of 161) [1/19/03 6:09:45 PM]

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Niven,%20Larry%20-%20The%20Legacy%20of%20He\orot.txtThoumustnowlooktotheneedsofthenation;HeredwellInolongerforDestinycallethme!BidthoumywarriorsaftermyfuneralpyreBuildmeaburial-cairnhighonthesea-cliff'shead;SothatthewayfarersBeowulf'sBarrowHenceforthshallnameit.Thouartth...

展开>> 收起<<

Niven, Larry - The Legacy of Heorot.pdf

共161页,预览5页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Niven, Larry - The Legacy of Heorot

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: