Читать книгу Report on the Threatened City - Doris Lessing - Страница 8

You will have wondered why there have been no transmissions before this. There have been two reasons. One: we realized at once that there would be heavier demands on our fuel than we had anticipated and that we would have to conserve it. Two: we were waiting to understand what it was we had to tell you. We did not understand the problem. For it was almost at once clear to us that all our thinking about ‘the gap in their mental structure’ was off the point. We have never understood the nature of the problem. So improbable is it that we delayed communicating until we were sure. The trouble with this species is not that it is unable to forecast its immediate future; it is that it doesn’t seem to care. Yet that is altogether too simple a stating of its condition. If it were so simple – that it knew that within five years its city was to be destroyed, or partly destroyed, and that it was indifferent – we should have to say: This species lacks the first quality necessary to any animal species; it lacks the will to live. Finding out what the mechanism is has caused the delay. Which I now propose partially to remedy by going into an account of what befell us, step by step. This will entail a detailed description of a species and a condition absolutely without precedent in our experience of the inhabited planets.