"Samuel R. Delany - The Star Pit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

one evening there were a couple of litters of white velvet balls half hidden by the low leaves of the shade
palms. The parents were occupied now and didn't pine to get out.

There was a rock half in and half out of the puddle, I remember, covered with what I'd always called
mustard-moss when I saw it in the wild. Once it put out a brush of white hairs. And one afternoon the
children ran to collect all the adults they could drag over. "Look, oh Da, Da, Ma, look!" The hairs had
detached themselves and were walking around the water's edge, turning end over end along the soft soil.

I had to leave for work in a few minutes and haul some spare drive parts out to Tau Ceti. But when I got
back five days later, the hairs had taken root, thickened, and were already putting out the small round
leaves of litmus vines. Among the new shoots, lying on her back, claws curled over her wrinkled belly,
eyes cataracted like the foggy jewels of the crystal plantтАФshe'd dropped her wings like cellophane days
agoтАФwas the flying lizard. Her pearl throat still pulsed, but as I watched, it stopped. Before she died,
however, she had managed to deposit, nearly camouflaged in the silt by the puddle, a scattering of red
seeds.

I remember getting home from another job where I'd been doing the maintenance on the shuttle-boats for
a crew putting up a ring station to circle a planet itself circling Aldebaran. I was gone a long time on that
one. When I left the landing complex and wandered out toward the tall weeds at the edge of the beach, I
still didn't see anybody.

Which was just as well because the night before I'd put on a real winner with the crew to celebrate the
completion of the station. That morning I'd taken a couple more drinks at the landing bar to undo last
night's damage. Never works.

The swish of frond on frond was like clashed rasps. Sun on the sand reached out fingers of pure glare
and tried to gouge my eyes. I was glad the home-compound was deserted because the kids would have
asked questions I didn't want to answer; the adults wouldn't ask anything, which was even harder to
answer.

Then, down by the ecologarium, a child screeched. And screeched again. Then Antoni came hurtling
toward me, half running, half on all fours, and flung himself on my leg. "Oh, Da! Da! Why, oh why, Da?"

I'd kicked my boots off and shrugged my shirt back at the compound porch, but I still had my overalls
on. Antoni had two fists full of my pants leg and wouldn't let go. "Hey, kid-boy, what's the matter?"

When I finally got him on my shoulder he butted his blubber wet face against my collarbone. "Oh, Da!
Da! It's crazy, it's all craaaa-zy!" His voice rose to lose itself in sobs.

"What's crazy, kid-boy? Tell Da."

Antoni held my ear and cried while I walked down to the plastic enclosure.

They'd put a small door in one wall with a two-number combination lock that was supposed to keep this
sort of thing from happening. I guess Antoni learned the combination from watching the older kids, or
maybe he just figured it out.

One of the young sloths had climbed out and wandered across the sand about three feet.

"See, Da! It crazy, it bit me. Bit me, Da!" Sobs became sniffles as he showed me a puffy, bluish place on