"L. Sprague De Camp - The Gnarly Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Camp L Sprague)

"When the final attack on Caesar's ring of fortifications came,
they sent me forward with some other archers to provide a covering
fire for their infantry. At least that was the plan. Actually I never
saw such a hopeless muddle in my life. And before I even got within
bow-shot, I fell into one of the Romans' covered pits. I didn't land
on the point of the stake, but I fetched up against the side of it
and busted my shoulder. There wasn't any help, because the Gauls were
too busy running away from Caesar's German cavalry to bother about
wounded men."

The author of God, Man, and the Universe gazed after his
departing patient. He spoke to his head assistant. "What do you think
of him?"
"I think it's so," said the assistant. "I looked over those X-
rays pretty closely. That skeleton never belonged to a human being."
"Hmm. Hmm," said Dunbar. "That's right, he wouldn't be human,
would he? Hmm. You know, if anything happened to him-"
The assistant grinned understandingly. "Of course there's the
S.P.C.A."
"We needn't worry about them. Hmm." He thought, you've been
slipping: nothing big in the papers for a year. But if you published
a complete anatomical description of a Neanderthal man-or if you
found out why his medulla functions the way it does-hmm-of course it
would have to be managed properly-
"Let's have lunch at the Natural History Museum," said
MeGannon. "Some of the people there ought to know you."
"Okay," drawled the gnarhy man. "Only I've still got to get
back to Coney afterward. This is my last day. Tomorrow Pappas and I
are going up to see our lawyer about ending our contract. It's a
dirty trick on poor old John, but I warned him at the start that this
might happen."
"I suppose we can come up to interview you while you're-ah-
convalescing? Fine. Have you ever been to the Museum, by the way?"
"Sure," said the gnarly man. "I get around."
"What did you-ah-think of their stuff in the Hall of the Age of
Man?"
"Pretty good. There's a little mistake in one of those big wall
paintings. The second horn on the woolly rhinoceros ought to slant
forward more. I thought about writing them a letter. But you know how
it is. They say 'Were you there?' and I say 'Uh-huh' and they say
'Another nut."
"How about the pictures and busts of Paleohithic men?"
"Pretty good. But they have some funny ideas. They always show
us with skins wrapped around our middles. In summer we didn't wear
skins, and in winter we hung them around our shoulders where they'd
do some good.
"And then they show those tall ones that you call Cro-Magnon
men clean shaven. As I remember they all had whiskers. What would
they shave with?"
"I think," said McGannon, "that they leave the beards off the