"Lafferty, R A - Among the Hairy Earthmen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

who ordered Nations. He flogged them flat.
"Bleak Children!" that Pilgrim cried out as he beat them
into the ground. "Unfledged little oafs! Is it so that you waste
your Afternoon on Earth? I'll give you what your Fathers
forgot."
Seven-colored thunder, how he could use that staff! He
smashed the gaudy bodies of the Children and broke many of
their damnable bones. Did he know that it didn't matter? Did
he understand that the bodies they wore were only for an
antic?
"Lay off, old Father!" begged Michael Goodgrind, bleeding
and half beaten into the earth. "Stay your bloody bludgeon.
You do not know who we are."
"I know you," maintained the Pilgrim mountainously.
"You are ignorant Children who have abused the Afteinoon
given you on Earth. You have marred and ruined and warped
everything you have touched."
"No, no," Ralpha protestedas he set in new bones for his
old damaged ones"You do not understand. We have ad-
vanced you a thousand of your years in one of our after-
noons. Consider the Centuries we have saved you! It's as
though we had increased your life by that thousand years."
"We have all the time there is," said the Pilgrim solidly.
"We were well and seriously along our road, and it was not so
crooked as the one you have brought us over. You have
broken our sequence with your meddling. You've set us back
more ways than you've advanced us. You've shattered our
Unity."
"Pigs have unity!" Joan shouted. "We've brought you
diversity. Think deep. Consider all the machines we have
showed you, the building and the technique. I can name you a
thousand things we've given you. You will never be the same
again."
"True. We will never be the same," said the Pilgrim. "You
may not be an unmixed curse. I'm a plain man and I don't
know. Surety is one of the things you've lost us. But you
befouled us. You played the game of Immoralities and taught
it to us earthlings."
"You had it already," Laurie insisted. "We only brought
elegance instead of piggishness to its practice." Immoralities
was Laurie's own game, and she didn't like to hear it slighted.
"You have killed many thousands of us in your battles,"
said the Pilgrim. "You're a bitter fruitsweet at the first taste
only."
"You would yourselves have killed the same numbers in
battles, and the battles wouldn't have been so .good," said
Michael. "Do you not realize that we are the higher race? We
have roots of great antiquity."
' "We have roots older than antiquity," averred the Pilgrim.
"You are wicked Children without compassion."