"Frankowski,.Leo.-.Tank.3.-.Kren.Of.The.Mitchegai" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

She was four feet tall, she was bright green, and she stank.

Four feet was a very acceptable height for a five-year-old,
nameless Mitchegai. All of her age mates were exactly the same
size, since the Mitchegai have very little genetic diversity. Like the
others, she still had relatively useless hands and arms hanging
from her stooped-over body, which was counterbalanced by a
heavy tail and propelled by two powerful legs. A human child might
think that she was a baby Tyrannosaurus rex, except that she had a
flat-fronted, vegetarian mouth.

Hers were not the pointed teeth of a carnivore, but the squared-off
incisors and flattened molars of a plant eater. Like all herbivores
everywhere, she had spent most of her short life grazing on plants.
Unlike those on non-Mitchegai worlds, she ate only one species of
plant, since there was only one species permitted on a world
owned by the Mitchegai. All others had been eradicated in the
distant, mystical past, millions of years ago, for Mitchegai have very
long histories. Her meat-eating teeth would grow in later, if she was
lucky, but as it happened, she was not.

Being bright green was marginally useful, since her thin skin
contained the local equivalent to chlorophyll and was capable of
manufacturing a small amount of the nutrients that her active body
needed. Indeed, being cold blooded, with a very low basal
metabolism, she could almost survive without food, simply by lying
quietly in the sun. This expedient was rarely necessary on a world
ruled by the far more intelligent adults.

Her odor was caused by never having taken a bath, save when she
was out in a rainstorm, but even this was no great disadvantage.
The Mitchegai have almost no sense of smell. They don't need
one. The olfactory sense is used largely to discriminate among
various foods, and the Mitchegai diet is extremely limited. Their
food never spoils because it is always eaten live, or as nearly so
as possible.

Even adult Mitchegai never deliberately bathe, although the wealthy
take steam baths. This is not so much to get clean, as for the
pleasure of overheating their cold-blooded bodies without exertion.

She had no idea of who her parents were, and this was quite
normal. Biological parentage is of no interest to the Mitchegai.
Adult females lay eggs the size of sand grains almost
continuously, which fall on the ground and are forgotten. Adult
males are surrounded by an unnoticeable fine mist of aerosol
sperm. Unnoticeable, that is, to a human. To the Mitchegai, a heavy