"Blish, James - Watershed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

evolved that way." He looked at Averdor again. "The navi-
gation was tricky around there during the swarming season."
Avedor failed to rise to the bait.
"I see; the point is well taken," Hoqqueah said, nodding
with grotesque thoughtfulness. "But let me point out to you,
Captain, that being already able to do a thing doesn't aid you
in thinking of it as something that needs to be perfected. Oh,
I've seen races like the one you describe, tooraces with
polymorphism, sexual alteration of generation, metamorphosis
of the insect life-history type, and so on. There's a planet
named Lithia, about forty light years from here, where the
dominant race undergoes complete evolutionary recapitulation
after birthnot before it, as men do. But why should any of
them think of form-changing as something extraordinary, and
to be striven for? It's one of the commonplaces of their lives,
after all."
A small bell chimed in the greenhouse. Hoqqueah got up at
once, his movements precise and almost graceful despite his
tubbiness. "Thus endeth the day," he said cheerfully. "Thank
you for your courtesy, Captain."
He waddled out. He would, of course, be back tomorrow.
And the day after that.
And the next dayunless the crewmen hadn't tarred and
feathered the whole bunch by then.
If only, Gorbel thought distractedly, if only the damned
Adapts weren't so quick to abuse their privileges! As a dele-
gate of the Colonization Council, Hoqqueah was a person of
some importance, and could not be barred from entering the
greenhouse except in an emergency. But didn't the man know
that he shouldn't use the privilege each and every day, on a
ship manned by basic-form human beings most of whom
could not enter the greenhouse at all without a direct order?
And the rest of the pantropists were just as bad. As pas-
sengers with the technical status of human beings, they could
go almost anywhere in the ship that the crew could goand
they did, persistantly and unapologetically, as though moving
among equals. Legally, that was what 'they werebut didn't
they know by this time that there was such a thing as preju-
dice? And that among common spacemen the prejudice
against their kindand against any Adapted Manalways
hovered near the borderline of bigotry?
There was a slight hum as Averdor's power chair swung
around to face the Captain. Like most Rigellian men, the lieu-
tenant's face was lean and harsh, almost like that of an an-
cient religious fanatic, and the starlight in the greenhouse hid
nothing to soften it; but to Capt. Gorbel, to whom it was fa-
miliar down to its last line, it looked especially forbidding
now.
"Well?" he said.
"I'd think you'd be fed to the teeth with that freak by this