"Ursula K. Leguin - The Flyers Of Gy - An Interplanetary Tale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

The Flyers of Gy
An Interplanary Tale
by Ursula K. Le Guin


The people of Gy look pretty much like people from our plane except that they
have plumage, not hair. A fine, fuzzy down on the heads of infants becomes a
soft, short coat of speckled dun on the fledglings, and with adolescence this
grows out into a full head of feathers. Most men have ruffs at the back of the
neck, shorter feathers all over the head, and tall, erectile crests. The
head-plumage of males is brown or black, barred and marked variously with
bronze, red, green, and blue. Women's plumes usually grow long, sometimes
sweeping down the back almost to the floor, with soft, curling, trailing
edges, like the tail-plumes of ostriches; the colors of the feathers of women
are vividтАФpurple, scarlet, coral, turquoise, gold. Gyr men and women are downy
in the pubic region and pit of the arm and often have short, fine plumage over
the whole body. People with brightly colored bodyfeathers are a cheerful sight
when naked, but they are much troubled by lice and nits.

Moulting is a continuous process, not seasonal. As people age, not all the
moulted feathers grow back, and patchy baldness is common among both men and
women over forty. Most people, therefore, save the best of their headfeathers
as they moult out, to make into wigs or false crests as needed. Those whose
plumage is scanty or dull can also buy feather wigs at special shops. There
are fads for bleaching one's feathers or spraying them gold or crimping them,
and wig shops in the cities will bleach, dye, spray, or crimp one's plumage
and sell headdresses in whatever the current fashion is. Poor women with
specially long, splendid headfeathers often sell them to the wig shops for a
fairly good price.

The Gyr write with quill pens. It is traditional for a father to give a set of
his own stiff ruff-quills to a child beginning to learn to write. Lovers
exchange feathers with which to write love letters to one another, a pretty
custom, referred to in a famous scene in the play The Misunderstanding by
Inuinui:


O my betraying plume, that wrote his love
To her! His loveтАФmy feather, and my blood!
The Gyr are a staid, steady, traditional people, uninterested in innovation,
shy of strangers. They are resistant to technological invention and novelty;
attempts to sell them ballpoint pens or airplanes, or to induce them to enter
the wonderful world of electronics, have failed. They go on writing letters to
one another with quill pens, calculating with their heads, walking afoot or
riding in carriages pulled by large, doglike animals called ugnunu, learning a
few words in foreign languages when absolutely necessary, and watching classic
stage plays written in iambic pentameter. No amount of exposure to the useful
technologies, the marvelous gadgets, the advanced scientific knowledge of
other planesтАФfor Gy is a fairly popular tourist stopтАФseems to rouse envy or
greed or a sense of inferiority in the Gyran bosom. They go on doing exactly