"Blish, James - Earth of Hours" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

sort of top official, so we brought him over here on the off
chance that one of you was alive."
"What a break!" Robin One said explosively.
"A whole series of them," 12-Upjohn agreed, none too
happily. He had long ago learned to be at his most suspicious
when the breaks seemed to be coming his way. "Well, better
bring him in."
"Can't," Oberholzer said. "Apologies, Your Excellency,
but he wouldn't fit. You'll have to come to him."
3
It was impossible to imagine what sort of stock the
Callean had evolved from. He seemed to be a thoroughgoing
mixture of several different phyla. Most of him was a brown,
segmented tube about the diameter of a barrel and perhaps
twenty-five feet long, rather like a cross between a python
and a worm. The front segments were carried upright, raising
the head a good ten feet off the ground.
Properly speaking, 12-Upjohn thought, the Callean really
had no head, but only a front end, marked by two enormous
faceted eyes and three upsetting simple eyes which were
usually closed. Beneath these there was a collar of six short,
squidlike tentacles, carried wrapped around the creature in
a ropy ring. He was as impossible-looking as he was fear-
some, and 12-Upjohn felt at a multiple disadvantage from the
beginning.
"How did you learn our language?" he said, purely as a
starter.
"I learned it from you," the Callean said promptly. The
voice was unexpectedly high, a quality which was accentuated
by the creature's singsong intonation; 12-Upjohn could not
see where it was coming from. "From your ship which I
took apart, the dragon-of-war."
"Why did you do that?"
"It was evident that you meant me ill," the Callean sang.
"At that time I did not know that you were sick, but that
became evident at the dissections."
"Dissections! You dissected the crew of the Dragon?"
"All but one."
There was a growl from Oberholzer. The Consort of State
shot him a warning glance.
"You may have made a mistake," 12-Upjohn said. "A
natural mistake, perhaps. But it was our purpose to offer
you trade and peaceful relationships. Our weapons were
only precautionary."
"I do not think so," the Callean said, "and I never make
mistakes. That you make mistakes is natural, but it is not
natural to me."
12-Upjohn felt his jaw dropping. That the creature meant
what he said could not be doubted; his command of the
language was too complete to permit any more sensible