"Harvey Jacobs - The Egg of the Glak" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jacobs Harvey)

I've never met Harvey Jacobs. I don't know anyone who's ever met
Harvey Jacobs. Mr. Jacobs, wherever he may be, does sadly dwell not in
the land of prolificacy. For this we must all sorrow. Because Mr. Jacobs
is a wonderful writer. His story is one of that rare species that when
read by other members of the same persuasion is often referred to in the
terms, "Gee, I wish I'd written that." No higher praise can writers
bestow on a colleague than emeraldine envy. There are some who might
argue that this story is more in the nature of science-fiction than
fantasy. It matters not, because it is not the subject of the tale that
concerns us here so much as it is the telling of it. "The Egg of the Glak" is
rambling and Rabelasian, writing chock-full of mental cholesterol,
fattening and filling and altogether as hearty as thick gumbo on a cold
winter's night. It is not, indeed, a perfect story.
In some ways it is better than that. We readers in search of something
beyond the mundane all have Harvey Jacobs to thank for hatching . . .



THE EGG OF THE
GLAK
Harvey Jacobs
To the memory of Dr. David Hikhoff, Ph.D. May he rest in peace.
Unless there is better.



A SPRING NIGHT. The campus quiet. The air soft breath. I stood at my
post, balanced on stiff legs. The fountain, a gift of '08, tinkled under
moonlight. Then he came, trumpeting like a mammoth, stomping, tilting,
staggering, nearly sitting, straightening, roaring from the back of his
mouth, a troublemaker.
"My diphthongs. They monophthongized my diphthongs. The frogs. The
frogs."
Echoes rattled the quadrangle.
I ran to grab him. It was like holding a bear. He nearly carried both of
us to the ground.
 "Poor kid. You poor kid," he said, waving short arms. "Another victim
of the great vowel shift. The Northumbrian sellout."
He cried real tears, hundred proof, and blotted his jewels with a rep tie.
Oh, this was no student drunk. This was faculty, an older man.
"Let us conjugate stone in a time-tarnished manner. Repeat after me.
Repeat or I will beat you to a mush. Stan, stan, stanes, stane, stanas,
stanas, stana, stanum."
"Easy, sir," I said.
"Up the Normans," he shrieked. "They loused my language. Mercian,
Kentish, West Saxon and Northumbrian sellouts. French ticklers. Tell your
children, and their children's children, unto the generations. Diphthongs
have been monophthongized. Help."
"I'm trying to help," I said.
"Police."