"Niven, Larry - Integral Trees - Known Space - 3 - Smoke Ring, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Two sleeps ago, while the rest of the tribe was roasting waterbirds from the pond, Lawri had held one of the creatures up for his perusal. "Have you ever really looked at these?"

Jeffer had seen waterbirds before . . . but he'd kept his mouth shut, and looked.

There were no feathers. The modified trilateral symmetry common to Smoke Ring life expressed itself in two wings and a tailfin, all in smooth membrane on collapsible ribs. The wings could be held half collapsed for motion within the denser medium of water. Only one of the three eyes looked like a normal bird's eye. The others were big and bulbous, with large pupils and thick lids. The bodies were slippery-smooth.

"I've eaten them, but . . . you're right. I've seen everything from mobies to triunes to flashers to drillbits, and they don't look like this. Earthlife doesn't either. Do you think it's so they can move through water?"

"I've tried looking them up in the cassettes," Lawri had said. "I tried bird. I tried water and pond. There's nothing."

Jeffer's next sleep had ended with a dream fading in his mind, leaving a single phrase: "... even the fish can fly."

He'd had to wait until now to try it.

He tapped yellow (the display vanished), then white (and got a tiny white rectangle at the dorsal-port comer). White read the cassettes; white summoned Voice. "Prikazyvat Voice," he said.

The voice of the CARM was a throaty bass, as deep as Mark the dwarf's voice. "Ready, Jeffer the Scientist."

"Prikazyvat Read Fish. Read it aloud."

The cassette was one that Jeffer had stolen from London Tree, but it was no different from Quinn Tribe's lost records of Smoke Ring life forms. As Voice spoke, print scrolled down the display screen: words recorded long ago by one of Discipline's abandoned crew.

FISH

IF THE BIRDS WITHIN THE SMOKE RING RESEMBLE FISH-LEGLESS, DESIGNED TO MOVE THROUGH AIR WEH3HTLESSLY, AS A FISH MOVES THROUGH WATERTHEN THE FISH THAT LIVE WITHIN THE PONDS RESEMBLE BIRDS.

EVERY FISH WE HAVE EXAMINED BREATHES AIR. THEY ARE NOT MAMMALS, BUT LUNGFISH. THE SINGLE CLASS OF EXCEPTIONS, GILLFISH, ARE DISCUSSED ELSEWHERE.

SOME CAN EXTRUDE A TUBE TO THE POND'S SURFACE.

A PEW CAN EXPAND THE SIZE OF THEIR PINS VIA MEMBRANES, TO MAKE THEM SERVE AS WINGS. ONE FORM, CORE FISH, INFLATES ITSELF WITH AIR, DIVES TO THE CENTER OF A POND, AND EXPELS A BUBBLE. IT CAN STAY SUBMERGED FOR UP TO A DAY-SEVERAL SMOKE RING DAYS-REBREATHING ITS AIR BUBBLE, MAKING FORAYS TO HUNT, AND THEN RETURNING.

THE WHALE-SIZED MOBY USES ITS POND AS A LAIR FROM WHICH IT BURSTS TO SWEEP THROUGH PASSING CLOUDS OF INSECTS. MOB VIS A COMPROMISE FORM, AND THERE ARE OTHERS.

CLEARLY EVEN THE LARGEST PONDS CAN BREAK UP OR EVAPORATE OR BE TORN APART BY STORM. EVERY CREATURE THAT LIVES IN A POND MUST BE PREPARED TO MIGRATE TO ANOTHER: TO BEHAVE LIKE A BIRD. EVEN GILLFISH-

"Prikazyvat Stop," Jeffer said. This memory that had surfaced from his adolescent training under Quinn Tribe's Scientist was going to put him one up on his wife!

Back to work. He tapped white, then green, then each of the five green rectangles now onscreen. Within the great window that faced the bark, five smaller windows appeared, looking starboard, port, dorsal, ventral, and aft. The ventral view had a blur and a flicker to it. The rest were clear, like the window itself.

The aft view looked along the line that led west to the pond. Citizens were returning to the tree. Behind them a bud of pond was already drifting toward the tree, with the harebrain net showing as a shadow within. Lawri's crazy idea was working.

They swarmed back along the cable toward the midpoint of Citizens Tree. Gavving and Minya and Anthon hung back, counting heads to be sure that all children were accounted for. A girl lost her grip and drifted; she was chortling and trying to swim through the air when Anthon scooped her up.

As children arrived, Clave herded the smaller ones, with some difficulty, into a rectangular frame with a slatted floor: the lift cage. He stopped when twelve children were inside. Leave room for a couple of adults.

The rest clung to the rough bark or floated like balloons on their tethers. There were wrestling matches. Eightyear-old Arth was getting good at using the recoil of his opponent's line. He was Clave's youngest, and just beginning the tremendous growth of adolescence.

Debby had arrived first. Clave could see her a hundred meters out along the bark, climbing toward the CARM.