"Colin Kapp - The Subways of Tazoo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kapp Colin)

It took three hours to complete the assembly. Fritz dis-appeared to the communications hut and returned
with an assortment of equipment which he appeared to assemble more by inspiration than by design.
When everything was ready he switched on. The first results were shattering, and the electronics needed
drastic revision before a reasonably tolerable result was obtained.
After some final adjustments Fritz pronounced himself satisfied with the results and dropped into a
chair to listen attentively, his gaze wandering to the open shutter and the blood-red sunset trailing nakedly
beyond.
"Listen to it, Jacko!" said Fritz happily. "Alien and beauti-ful beyond recall."
"I might just point out," said Jacko, "that if somebody attempted to re-string a two-million years old
grand piano with stranded cable and without any idea of the scale and pitch involved, the results would
sound equally alien."
"I'm in no mood to quibble with one who possesses such a tiny soul," said Fritz. "To me this is music
such as the ancient Tazoons knew it as they walked hand in hand in the eyeless evenings of old Tazoo.
Can't you imagine it, Jacko, this incredible music voiced by a million harps in the blood-red twilight of
this alien land?"
"It makes my head ache," said Jacko. "What are you feed-ing into the blasted thing, anyway?"
Fritz coughed. "Actually it's the telemetry signals from the satellite monitoring the Tazoon ionosphere,
but the harp con-tributes about five-hundred per cent distortion, so you never know it from music."
"I can't help feeling distinctly uneasy," said Jacko, "about the notion of anybody wanting half a million
crazy self-playing harps to the square kilometre. No culture could be that fond of music and yet survive."
"They didn't survive. And we can't yet hope to understand so alien a culture. If you want a parallel,
think of all the millions of personal transistor radios taken to the beaches on Terra on a public holiday.
Think how much simpler life would be if they erected loudspeakers at four-foot intervals on all beaches
and made full-time listening compulsory instead of merely unavoidable."
Despite the warmth Jacko shuddered visibly and closed his eyes, while the complex tones of the harp
sang strangely with unfathomable harmonies which did curious things to his stomach. "I'm beginning to
get the idea," he said, "exactly why the Tazoons decided to migrate. Listening to this, I get precisely the
same urge myself."
At that moment the door was flung open and Nevill, eyes aglow with jubilation, burst into the hut.
"Fritz, we've done it! A real find at last. To judge from the extent of our soundings we seem to have hit
upon the location of a whole damn Tazoon city under the sand."
Fritz bounded up with enthusiasm. "Congratulations, Philip! This sounds like the breakthrough we've
been wait-ing for. Exactly where is this site?"
"Under our very nosesтАФabout twenty kilometres east of here. I tell you, Fritz, my boy, there's
a real metropolis down there."
He stopped, aware for the first time of the singing harp.
"What in the name of Thunder is that?"
"A genuine Tazoon harp in action," said Fritz modestly. "Don't you like it?"
"No," said Nevill, "because it isn't right. Nobody, however alien, would want more than one of
anything that sounds like that. Besides"тАФhe mopped the moisture which had risen on his browтАФ"the
Tazoons had very small ear cavities. Their audible range was undoubtedly in the medium ultrasonic.
Frankly they could never have heard anything pitched as low as that. Sorry! Try and make it do
something else like light-ing fires or something."
And so saying, he was gone, leaving Fritz looking miser-ably at his equipment and trying to avoid
Jacko's eyes.
"All right," said Fritz, "so even I can't always be right first tune." He turned off the amplifier
disconsolately. "I still think it was a good idea."
 "That's the second of your good ideas that has run off the rails today," said Jacko, fingering
his ears.