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around. The reason there are two sexes has nothing to do with producing
children. The biological part's easy. It's to raise them. They need a bit of
both of us. . .
. Ah, it looks as if we're through. They've certainly got the net up and
working here."
"Can I say hello to Yorim?" Lorili asked.
"Sure. I was hoping you would."
"Really? Why?"
"Oh. . . . Just to see his face, I guess."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm supposed to be so traditional. Remember?"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The group that Yorim was with had changed their plans at the last moment and
gone westward from
Rhombus instead of east. Wearing an open bush shirt with britches to just
below the knee, and a floppy-brimmed hat that a site worker he'd stopped to
talk to had given him, Yorim was sitting not far from Jenyn near the top of an
immense weathered pyramid. Naseena and Mowrak were clambering about a short
distance above, around the summit. The others, were below, exploring tunnels
that had been discovered, going deep into structure.
The pyramid was the largest of three, standing between flat grasslands that
disappeared to the horizon in one direction, and a broad river running south
to north in the other. According to the geologists, the area had been a dry
desert once. A strange effigy of an animal in repose with a human head stood
near the pyramids, which along with other constructions in the surrounding
area dated from a civilization far older than the Western technological one.
Many great cultures had evidently arisen on
Earth and been gone and practically forgotten by the time of whatever the
final calamity had been that ended all of them. It brought home just how young
Venus was in comparison.
"You know what this reminds me of?" Yorim said, still squinting out at the
distance. "You remember the guy that I was with in Rhombus, who went his own
way, Kyal? He's an electro-propulsion specialist.
We went to some trials once, that they were conducting back home, of an
experimental model of a high-power interplanetary drive they're talking about
that would land you right down on the surface. But to do that, an incoming
ship would need to lose its excess buildup of charge. The attractor they used
was this kind of shape a pointed artificial mountain. It focuses the field,
like a lightning rod. You'd need something like that even more here on Earth.
It's more active electrically than Venus. Doesn't have the same amount of
cloud blanket to act as an intermediary distributor between space currents and
the surface."
"Technical matters don't concern me," Jenyn answered. "My subject is
languages."
Yorim hadn't formed an impression of him as the friendliest of people, but
there was nobody else nearby to talk to just now. Jenyn seemed to be of the
kind who never smiled, as if he preferred keeping others at a distance. Maybe
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
he felt that setting expectations of amicability conferred an obligation to
live up to them that put him at some kind of disadvantage. Yorim didn't
particularly care why. "Is that what you were doing across in the Americas?"
he asked.
"Yes. In the north they spoke mainly English, which is the principal language
that we're studying."
"But England was over this side, right?"
"True. But more sources are turning up over there." Jenyn looked across at
where Yorim was sitting.
"It was a legacy from the times when the English were a nation of conquerors.
They had a huge empire for a time." Yorim got the feeling he was looking for
approval.
"If you say so," he replied noncommittally.
"Don't you think Venus could learn something from Earth?" Jenyn persisted.
"How to stand up and fight for the right to be independent, for instance. To
reject these constraints we have to live under, that say you can only be what
the approval of others allows you to be." His tone moved a notch toward being
conciliatory. "I would have thought that would appeal to someone like you. You
seem like an independent kind of spirit. I'm pretty good at sensing a
potential rebellious streak in people the instinct to be one's own person."
Yorim showed his teeth, drawing a plant stem between them that he had picked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]