"Henry Kuttner - The Lion and the Unicorn UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

"We'll survive it."
"You think so? With every non-Baldy's hand ready to strike down telepaths-man, woman or child? There'll be no quarter given. We need another world, a new world-"
"That'll have to wait till we get interstellar ships."
"And meanwhile we live on borrowed time. It might be best if we let the human race reassimilate us."
"Retrogression?"
"Suppose it is? We're in the position of a unicorn in a herd of horses. We daren't use our horn to defend ourselves. We've got to pretend to be horses."
"The lion and the unicorn," Barton said, "were fighting for the crown. Well, Callahan and his paranoids are the lion, all right. But the crown?"
"Inevitably," McNey said, "it must be rule. Two dominant species can't exist on the same planet or even in the same system. Humans and telepaths can't evenly divide rule. We're
knuckling under now. Eventually, we'll arrive, by a different path, at Callahan's goal. But not by degrading or enslaving humans! Natural selection is our weapon. Biology's on our side. If we can only live in peace with humans, until-"
"-and drummed them out of town," Barton said.
"So the humans mustn't suspect the lion and the unicorn are fighting. Or what they're fighting for. Because if they do, we won't survive the pogrom. There will be no refuge. Our race is soft, through environment and adaptation."
"I'm worried about Callahan," Barton said suddenly. "I don't know what he's planning. By the time I find out, it may be too late. If he sets something in operation that can't be stopped-"
"I'll keep working," McNey promised. "I may be able to give you something soon."
"I hope so. Well, I'm flying to St. Nick tonight. Ostensibly to check the zoo there. Actually, I've other motives. Maybe I can pick up Callahan's trail."
"I'll walk you down to the village." McNey went with Barton into the dropper. They stepped outside into the warm, spring air, glancing through the transparent wall at the televisor where Alexa sat with Line. Barton said, "They don't seem worried, anyhow."
McNey laughed. "She's sending in her column to the Recorder. Alexa's a specialist on heart problems. I hope she never has any of her own to solve!"
"-if you love him," Alexa said into the mike, "marry him. And if he loves you, he'll have no objection to running psychrating tests and comparing id balance sheets. You're considering a lifetime partnership, and both of you should read the contracts before signing them." She managed to look like a cat with cream on its whiskers. "But always remember that love is the most important thing in the world. If you find that, it will always be springtime in your hearts. Good luck, Wondering!"
She pressed a switch. "Thirty, Line. My job's done for the day. That's one sort of job a Baldy can find-heart problem editor on a telepaper. Think you'd like it?"
"No," Line said. "It ain't... it's not up my alley."
He was wearing a silken blue shirt and darker blue shorts, and a cropped brown wig covered his skull. He wasn't used to it yet, and kept touching it uneasily.
"Ain't as good as isn't," Alexa said. "I know what you
mean, and that's more important than grammatical construction. More lessons?"
"Not for a while yet. I get tired easy. Talking's still more natural, somehow."
"Eventually you'll be finding it cumbersome. Personal endings-you speak, he speaks, parlons, parlez, parlent-tele-pathically you don't use those vestiges."
"Vestiges?"
"Sure," Alexa said. "From the Latin. The Romans didn't use pronouns. Just amo, amas, amant," she clarified mentally, "and the endings gave you the right pronoun. Nous, vous, and Us are used now instead, we, you plural, and they. So the endings are unnecessary. If you're communicating with a Swiss telepath, though you might find yourself wondering why he kept thinking of a girl as it. But you'd know what it meant to him, and you couldn't if you were being oral only."
"It's plenty hard," Line said. "I'm getting the angles, though. That round-robin business we had last night was-" He groped for a word, but Alexa caught the meaning from his mind.
"I know. There's an intimacy that's pretty wonderful. You know, I've never felt badly about being adopted. I knew just where I fitted into Marian's life and Darryl's, and how they felt about me. I knew I belonged."
"It must be a nice feeling," Line said. "I'm sort of getting it, though."
"Of course.. You're one of Us. After you've mastered the telepathic function, you won't have any doubts at all."
Line watched the play of sunlight on Alexa's bronze curls. "I guess I do belong with your kind of folks."
"Glad you came with Dave?"
He looked at his hands. "I can't tell you, Alexa. I can't tell you how wonderful it is. I'd been shut out in the dark all my life, thinking I was a freak, never feeling right sure about myself. Then all this-" He indicated the televisor. "Magical miracles, that's what. And all the rest."
Alexa understood what was in his mind. Through him she felt the heady excitement of an exile returning to his own kind. Even the visor, familiar symbol of her job, assumed a new glamour, though it was the standard double-screen model, the upper for news flashes, the lower for the twenty-four-hour newspaper that was received, recorded on wire-film, and thereafter available for reference. Push-buttons selected the
publication, and the dials made it possible to focus down on the pages, on either the action pictures or the printed matter. Format, of course, was quite as important as news value. The big concealed wall-screen at one end of the room was used for plays, concerts, movies, and Disneys. But for the added sensual attractions of smell, taste, and touch, one had to go to the theaters; such special equipment was still too expensive for the average home.
"Yes." Alexa said, "you're one of Us. And you've got to remember that the future of the race is important. If you stay, you must never do anything to hurt it."
"I remember what you've been telling me about the p-para-noids," Line nodded. "Guess they're sort of like the cannibal tribes 'mong the Hedgehounds. They're fair quarry for anybody." He felt his wig, stepped to a mirror-unit, and adjusted the headpiece.
Alexa said, "There's Marian outside. I want to see her. Wait for me, Line; I'll be back."
She went out, Lincoln, awkwardly testing his newly-realized powers, felt her thought fingering subtly toward the plump, pretty woman who was moving among the flowers, armed with gloves and spray.
He wandered to the clavilux, and, one-fingered, picked out a tune. He hummed:
"All in the merry month of May, When the green buds they were swellin',
Young Jemmy Grove on his death-bed lay For love of Barb'ry Alien."
Memories of Cassie rose up. He forced them back into the shadows, along with the Hedgehounds and the nomad life he had known. That wasn't his life any more. Gassie-she'd get along all right. He'd go after her, one of these days, and bring her to live with him among the Baldies. Only-only she wasn't a Baldy. She wasn't like Alexa, for instance. She was quite as pretty, sure; yet there was all this talk about the future of the race. If, now, he married a Baldy and had Baldy sons and daughters-
But, he was already married. What was the good of thinking so? A Hedgehound marriage might not amount to a hill of beans among the townsfolk, of course, and, anyway, all this mental round-robin stuff was sort of polygamy.
Well, he'd climb that hill when he came to it. First he had
to get the trick of this telepathy business. It was coming, but slowly, for he'd not been conditioned since infancy, as other Baldies were. The latent power had to be wakened and directed-not as a child could be taught, but allowing for Line's maturity, and his ability to grasp and understand the goal.
Marian came in with Alexa. The older woman stripped off her cloth gloves and brushed beads of perspiration from her ruddy cheeks. " 'Lo, Line," she said. "How's it going?"
"Fairish, Marian. You should of asked me to help out there."
"I need the exercise. I gained three pounds this morning arguing with that turnip-bleeder Gatson, down at the store. Know what he wants for fresh breadfruit?"
"What's that?"