"Foster, Alan Dean - Humanx 3 - Nor Crystal Tears" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

exceeded that of sight in importance.
He listened and understood, but that did not lessen the frustration. He would
worm his way around the exercise course because they insisted he needed
exercise, but he was ever conscious of what a pale shadow of true mobility it
was. Oh, so frustrating!
Larval years were the Learning Time. Hardly able to move, unable to smell or
faz, barely able to converse, but with decent sight and hearing a larva was
adequately equipped for learning.
He was a particularly voracious student, absorbing everything and asking
greedily for more. His teachers and Nurses were pleased, as was the teaching
machine attached to his cradle. He mastered High and Low Thranx, although he
could properly speak neither. He learned physics and chemistry and basic
biology, including the danger posed by any body of water deeper than the thorax,
where the adult's breathing spicules were located. An adult Thranx could float,
but not forever, and when the water entered the body, it sank. Swimming was a
talent reserved for primнitive creatures with internal skeletons.
He was taught astronomy and geology although he'd never seen the sky or the
earth, for all that he lived beнneath the surface. The Nursery was exquisitely
tiled and paneled. Other sections of Paszex, his home town, were lined with
plastics, ceramics, metals, or stonework. In the ancient burrows on the planet
Hivehom, where the Thranx had evolved, were tunnels and chambers lined with
regurgiнtated cellulose and body plaster.
Industry and agriculture were studied. History told how the social arthropods
known as the Thranx first mastered Hivehom, adapting to existence above as well
as below the surface, and then spread to other worlds. Eventually theolнogy was
discussed and the larvae made their choices.
Then on to more complex subjects as the mind matured, to biochemistry,
nucleonics, sociology and psychology and the arts, including jurisprudence. He
particularly enjoyed the history of space travel, the stories of the first
hesitant flights to the three moons of Hivehom in clumsy rockets, the
development of the posigravity drive that pushed ships through the gulf between
the stars, and the establishment of colonies on worlds like Dixx and Everon and
Calm Nursery. He learned of the burgeoning commerce between Willo-wane, his own
colony world, and Hivehom and the other colonies.
How he wanted to go to Hivehom when he learned of it! The mother world of the
people, Hivehom. Magical, enchanting name. His Nurses smiled at his excitement.
It was only natural he should want to travel there. Everyone did.
Yet something more showed on his profile charts, an unнdefined yearning that
puzzled the larval psychologists. Possibly it was related to his unusual
hatching. The normal four eggs had bequeathed not male and female pairs but
three females and this one male.
He was aware of the psychologists' concerns but didn't worry about them. He
concentrated on learning as much as possible, stuffing his mind full to bursting
with the wonнders of existence. While these strange adults mumbled about
"indecisiveness" and "unwillingness to tend toward a course of action," he
plowed through the learning proнgrams, mitigating their worries with his
extraordinary apнpetite for knowledge.
Couldn't they understand that he wasn't interested in any one particular
subject? He was interested in everyнthing. But the psychologists didn't
understand, and they fretted. So did his family, because a Thranx on the Verge