"Alan Dean Foster - Humanx 3 - Nor crystal tears" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 82&8209;8836



ISBN 0&8209;345&8209;32447&8209;1



Manufactured in the United States of America



First Edition: September 1982

Sixth Printing: January 1985



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Cover art by Michael Whelan

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For the tiger with the little&8209;girl voice and the velvet claws,

My agent, Virginia Kidd, with thanks for

Ten years of encouraging purrs and constructive scratches.

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Chapter One



It's hard to be a larva. At first there's nothing. Very gradually a dim, uncertain consciousness
coalesces from nothingness. Awareness of the world arrives not as a shock, but as a gray
inevitability. The larva cannot move, cannot speak. But it can think.

His first memories, naturally, were of the Nursery: a cool, dimly lit tubular chamber of
controlled commotion and considerable noise. Beneath the gently arched ceiling, adults conversed
with his fellow larvae. With awareness of his surroundings came recognition of self and of body: a
lumpish, meter&8209;and&8209;a&8209;half&8209;long cylindrical mass of mottled white flesh.