"Carol Emshwiller - Acceptance Speech (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emshwiller Carol)

CAROL EMSHWILLER

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

NOBLE POETS OF THE consortium:

You have conferred upon me your highest honor, you have called me, in your own
words, Most Noble of the Noble (though "words" is hardly the proper way to
refer
to what you call your parts of speech, so, rather, your syllables, your
prefixes, your signs and signals), and I have already made the accepting
gestures as well as I can manage them.

Now, in order to know your strange yet "Humble Master" better, you have asked
for my alien view of the story of how I came to be your leader. I will tell
you.

I came here, as you all know, as a mere specimen -- a spot -- a "speck," as
you
have called me; kidnapped from my world. I jumped through the right door on
the
first try -- ran the maze, jumped to the proper ledge, escaped pain (at least
for the moment). Though our noses are not as keen as yours, I could smell the
rot behind that door -- the sea-like rot that seemed to me might mean freedom.
It turned out to be a feeding trough. I did not eat. At least not then.

But I have come to be a new meaning in your land, which is sweet to me to be
and
even more so because I will eat, now, nothing but the roots of lilies and the
blossoms of squash, or, rather, what, on my world, would seem to be the
equivalent of these things.

Here, not everything is strange to me. There are small things that might as
well
be cats. There are fish. The only difference is that they can fly as well
through air as through water so one sees fish sitting in the trees preening
themselves, which is a strange sight to me. The trees not unlike those from my
own home world, though I've seen none taller than a tall man. The land, at
least
in this area, is flat and every few yards there is another stream to cross.
This
I've seen though not experienced. Before, I wasn't important enough to walk
the
land, and now I'm too important for it and will be carried along in a sort of
upright barrel with a little tent over it in case it rains, which it often
does.

It was my curls that started you off about me. Curls are rare among you. You
call them "curls of the dreamers that come from having dreamed. Curls," as you
say, "of creativity." It is by my curls that I came to be in the magnificent