"Philip Jose Farmer - WOT 5 - The Lavalite World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

He handed Anana's light throwing axe to McKay.

"What about those?" McKay said, pointing at three trees which were only
twenty feet below their intended victim. They were coming slowly but steadily.

"Maybe we can get their apples, too. We need that fruit, Angus. We need
the nourishment, and we need the water in them."
 "You don't have to explain that," McKay said.

"I'm like the tree. I can't keep my mouth shut," Kickaha said, smiling.

He fitted an arrow to the string, aimed, and released it. It shot true,
plunging deep into the O-shaped orifice. The plant had just raised the two
tentacles to take another step upward and then to fall slightly forward to
catch itself on the rubbery extensions. Kickaha had loosed the shaft just as
it was off balance. It fell backward, and it lay on its hinder part. The
tentacles threshed, but it could not get up by itself. The branches extending
from its side prevented its rolling over even if it had been capable,
otherwise, of doing so.

Kickaha gave a whoop and put a hand on McKay's shoulder.

"Never mind throwing the axe. The apples are knocked off. Hot damn!"

The three trees below it had stopped for a moment. They moved on up.
There had not been a sound from their mouths, but to the two men the many
rolling eyes seemed to indicate some sort of communication. According to
Urthona, however, the creatures were incapable of thought. But they did
cooperate on an instinctual level, as ants did. Now they were evidently coming
to assist their fallen mate.

Kickaha ran ahead of McKay, who had hesitated. He looked behind him. The
two male Lords were standing about sixty feet above them. Anana, beamer in
hand, was watching, her head moving back and forth to keep all within eye-
range.

Urthona had, of course, told McKay to kill Anana and Kickaha if he ever
got a chance. But if he hit the redhead from behind with the axe, he'd be shot
down by Anana. Besides, he was beginning to think that he had a better chance
of survival if he joined up with Anana and Kickaha. Anyway, Kickaha was the
only one who didn't treat him as if he was a nigger. Not that the Lords had
any feeling for blacks as such. They regarded everybody but Lords as some sort
of nigger. And they weren't friendly with their own kind.

McKay ran forward and stopped just out of reach of a threshing tentacle.
He picked up eight apples, stuffing four in the pockets of his levis and
holding two in each hand.

When he straightened up, he gasped. That crazy Kickaha had leaped onto