"Raymond Z. Gallun - Seeds of Dusk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gallun Raymond Z)

the others, Kaw and his black-feathered brood were the most potent
makers of trouble. Not because they would attempt active offense
themselves, but because they were able to spread news far and wide.
Kaw wheeled alone now, high in the sunlight, his ebon wings
outstretched, his cruel, observant little eyes studying the desolate terrain
below. Buried in the sand, away from the cold, he and his mate and their
companions had slept through the winter. Now Kaw was fiercely hungry.
He could eat ants if he had to, but there should be better food available at
this time of year.
Once, his keen eyes spied gray movement far below. As if his poised and
graceful flight was altered by the release of a trigger, Kaw dived
plummet-like and silent toward the ground.
His attack was more simple and direct than usual. But it was successful.
His reward was a large, long-tailed rodent, as clever as himself. The
creature uttered squeaks of terror as meaningful as human cries for help.
In a moment, however, Kaw split its intelligently rounded cranium with a
determined blow from his strong, pointed beak. Bloody brains were
devoured with indelicate gusto, to be followed swiftly by the less tasty flesh
of the victim. If Kaw had ever heard of table manners, he didnтАЩt bother
with them. Kaw was intensely practical.
His crop full, Kaw was now free to exercise the mischievous curiosity
which he had inherited from his ancient forbears. They who had, in the
long-gone time when Earth was young, uprooted many a young corn
shoot, and had yammered derisively from distant treetops when any irate
farmer had gone after them with a gun.
With a clownish skip of his black, scaly feet, and a show-offish swerve of
his dusty ebon wings, Kaw took to the air once more. Upward he soared,
his white-lidded eyes directed again toward the ground, seeking
something interesting to occupy his attention and energies.
Thus, presently, he saw a brownish puff that looked like smoke or dust
in the gully beside the ruined blue tower at the pinnacle of which he and
his mate were wont to build their nest in summer. Sound came thenтАФa
dull, ringing pop. The dusty cloud expanded swiftly upward, widening and
thinning until its opacity was dissipated into the clearness of the
atmosphere.
Kaw was really startled. That this was so was evinced by the fact that he
did not voice his harsh, rasping cry, as he would have done had a lesser
occurrence caught his attention. He turned back at first, and began to
retreat, his mind recognizing only one possibility in what had occurred.
Only the Itorloo, the Children of Men, as far as he knew, could produce
explosions like that. And the Itorloo were cruel and dangerous.
However, Kaw did not go far in his withdrawal. Presently тАФsince there
were no further alarming developmentsтАФhe was circling back toward the
source of the cloud and the noise. But for many minutes he kept what he
considered a safe distance, the while he tried to determine the nature of
the strange, bulging, grayish-green thing down there in the gully.
A closer approach, he decided finally, was best made from the ground.
And so he descended, alighting several hundred yards distant from the
narrow pocket in the desert.
Thence he proceeded to walk cautiously forward, taking advantage of