"Butler, Octavia - Xenogenesis 01 - Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Butler Octavia E)

"Ask Nikanj."
"I have! It won't tell me."
"Perhaps it will now. Have you finished eating?"
"I've had enough-in more ways than one."
"Come on. I'll open the wall for you."
She unfolded herself from her platform and followed him to the wall.
"Nikanj can help you remember without writing," he told her as he touched the wall with several head tentacles.
"How?"
"Ask it."
She stepped through the hole as soon as it was large enough, and found herself intruding on the two ooloi who refused to notice her beyond the automatic sweep of some of their head tentacles. They were talking-arguing---in very fast Oankali. She was, no doubt, the reason for their dispute.
She looked back, hoping to step back through the wall and leave them. Let one of them tell her later what had been decided. She didn't imagine it would be anything she would be eager to hear. But the wall had sealed itself-abnormally quickly.
Nikanj seemed to be holding its own, at least. At one point, it beckoned to her with a sharp movement of head tentacles. She moved to stand beside it, willing to offer whatever moral support she could against Kahguyaht.
Kahguyaht stopped whatever it had been saying and faced her. "You haven't understood us at all, have you?" it asked in English.
"No," she admitted.
"Do you understand me now?" it asked in slow Oankali.
"Yes."
Kahguyaht turned its attention back to Nikanj and spoke rapidly. Straining to understand, Lilith thought it said something close to, "Well, at least we know she's capable of learning."
"I'm capable of learning even faster with paper and pencil," she said. "But with or without them, I'm capable of telling you what I think of you in any one of three human languages!"
Kahguyaht said nothing for several seconds. Finally it turned, opened a wall, and left the room.
When the wall had closed, Nikanj lay down on the bed and crossed its arms over its chest, hugging itself.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"What are the other two languages?" it asked softly.
She managed a smile. "Spanish and German. I used to speak a little German. I still know a few obscenities."
"You are . . . not fluent?"
"I am in Spanish."
"But why not in German?"
"Because it's been years since I've studied it or spoken it-years before the war, I mean. We humans . . . if we don't use a language, we forget it."
"No. You don't."
She looked at its tightly contracted body tentacles and decided it did not look happy. It really was concerned over her failure to learn quickly and retain everything. "Are you going to let me have writing materials?" she asked.
"No. It will be done our way. Not yours."
"It ought to be done the way that works. But what the hell. You want to spend two or three times as long teaching me, you go right ahead."
''I don't.''
She shrugged, not caring whether it missed the gesture or failed to understand it.
"Ooan was upset with me, Lilith, not with you."
"But because of me. Because I'm not learning fast enough."
"No. Because . . . because I'm not teaching you as it thinks I should. It fears for me."
"Fears...? Why?"
"Come here. Sit here. I will tell you."
After a time, she shrugged again and went to sit beside it.
"I'm growing up," it told her. "Ooan wants me to hurry with you so that you can be given your work and I can mate."
"You mean . . . the faster I learn, the sooner you mate?"
"Yes. Until I have taught you, shown that I can teach you, I won't be considered ready to mate."
There it was. She was not just its experimental animal. She was, in some way she did not fully understand, its final exam. She sighed and shook her head. "Did you ask for me Nikanj, or did we just get dumped on one another?"
It said nothing. It doubled one of its arms backward in a way natural to it, but still startling to Lilith, and rubbed its armpit. She tilted her head to one side to examine the place it was rubbing.
"Do you grow the sensory arms after you've mated or before?" she asked.
"They will come soon whether I mate or not."
"Should they grow in after you're mated?"
"Mates like them to come in afterward. Males and females mature more quickly than ooloi. They like to feel that they have... how do you say? Helped their ooloi out of childhood."
"Helped raise them," Lilith said, "or helped rear them."
"... rear?''