"Niven, Larry - Smut Talk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Wajee said, "Got to get one part right every tune-"
They chittered laughter Wajee said, "Accident can happen. Turkey can escape. Resting male can be distracted, or remember old offense and not move quick."
Sfillirrath said, "But see antiadvantage? Males don't die. Too many males. Soon every female must have many mates, or else rogue males tear down cities."
Wajee said, "Mating frequency rises too. Too many mouths. Must invent herding."
"Herd, then tend crop to feed herd. Then cities and factories. Then barrier hag over placer tube," Sfillirrath said, "so don't make a clutch of infants every curse time! Now we mate without mating, but need cities to support factories to make barrier bags, laws and lawmakers to enforce use. Control air and water flow, cycle waste, spacecraft to moons for raw resources, first contact with chirpsithra, beg ride to see the universe and here arc we. All for a perversion of nature."
Jehaneh asked the Folk, "How do you keep your numbers in bounds?"
"Breed more dangerous prey," one answered.
The female Gray Mourner asked, "How do human beings pervert sex practice?"
I asked the woman, "Shall I take this?" She gestured, Go. I suppose I shaded the truth a bit toward what she might want to hear "What Jehaneh said isn't all true. Most of us don't mate with anything but adults of the other gender Most men know that most women want one mate. Most women know that any man can be seduced. We make bargains and promises and contracts. We compromise. To go against human nature is the most human thing a human being can do."
The Folk all laughed. Jehaneh was watching me. I said, "We're a young species. In an older species the sexual reflexes would be hardwired." I wasn't sure that would translate, but none of the devices paused. Any space traveller uses computers. "But with us, sex involves the mind. We're versatile."
"We have barrier bags too," Jehaneh said. A moment's eye contact─condoms, of course, and had I caught the reference? I flashed a smirk.
Still, I wouldn't be needing a baffler bag tonight. The rasp at the back of my throat told me that I'd be snuffling and coughing and attachment free. I was lucky it had held off this long.
A Folk asked, "How are you versatile? Male with male? With sexual immature? Outside species?"
Sfillirrath asked, "Triads?"
"You've been reading the tabloids," I guessed.
Jehaneh said primly, "All of that has been known to happen. We discourage it."
"There are legends," I said. "Old stories that weren't written down until centuries after they were made. Mermaids were half woman, half sea life."
"And mermen," she said.
"Jehaneh, those are modern," I said. "When sailors were all men, mermaids were all women with fish tails and wonderful voices-"
Jehaneh asked, УAre you an anthropologist, Rick?"
"Sure."
"In what discipline? What is your education?"
I'd been lecturing on her turf. My head throbbed, the day's low-level headache lurching into high gear. I must have caught what Gail and Herman had stayed home with.
I reeled off some of my credits. "If you're an anthropologist, you might consider working here for a year or so. We rotate fairly frequently, and both my steadies are out at the moment."
"No, I'm a bacteriologist."
Bacteriologist? How was I going to get closer to a bacteriologist? I was trying to plan for the long range. . . and the aliens weren't following this at all.
I said, "We humans, we do seem wired up to mate with strangers, outside the tribe. At least in fiction, yeah, Jehaneh, we'd mate with anything. Fairies were powerful aliens, nearly human, not very well described. Humans with goat horns or animal heads, goat legs, fish tails, wings. Some were that tall," hands eight inches apart, "others the size of mountains. Spirits in trees and pools of water, angels and devils and gods from various myths and religions, they all mated with human beings in some stories. I'm telling you what's buried in our instincts. We don't always act on our instincts." I realized I was rambling.
"Rick, do you have any visual aids about?"
I gaped. Jehaneh's smile seemed innocent, but the question was impish. "I don't think so." A raunchy thought crossed mymind. "Did you want a demonstration?"
"I don't think you'll be up for that," Jehaneh said.
"No, not tonight ... flu."
She shook her head. "Invader. I came here to keep it confined."
Confined. Invader. Bacteriologist. A murky truth congealed: I didn't have the flu. Some alien disease had come with the chirpsithra ship. I started to say something to Jehaneh, tried to stop myself, and found my thoughts running away.
The Wahartht leapt to the table, then the wall- He scuttled toward an upper window, his 36 fingers finding purchase where there was none. Jehaneh reached into her purse.
In that moment's distraction I turned to run - wondered what I was doing - and every muscle locked in terror. Not even my scream could get out. The goddamned flu was thinking with my brain!
Jehaneh aimed her purse. The Wahartht fell, stunned. I saw it all from the corner of my eye. I couldn't turn my head to watch.
Jehaneh reached forward and turned off my translator She spoke into her own. "Bring them in."
I couldn't lift my arms. Escape was impossible: The host was fighting me. My head was beating like a big drum.
Sfillirrath's long, fragile arms set a cap of metal mesh on my head. She spoke into her own translator It was a chirp make, crudely rewired. I heard, but not with my ears and not in any language of Earth, "For your life, you must speak."
I chose not to answer.
Two armoured men took charge of the Wahartht. One took his breather and dropped it into a bag and sealed it, and set another on his face.
Gail and Herman came in. They bent above me, looking worried. Gail said, "Rick? You're very sick. We were too, but they cured us-"
"Don't agree to anything!" Herman said fiercely. "Not unless you want to make medical history!"
Sfillirrath spoke. "See you these humans. You took them for hosts some days ago, you and your Wahartht pawn. Your colonies bred too fast for their health. In another day they would have killed them, but human defenders acted first. Most of your colonies on the ship are dead too. How did you reward a Wahartht, to make him betray so many?"
I said, not with my voice, "Simulate mating. The drug he takes to tranquilize depression does not leave him alert and happy. I do."
"And what fool would assume that sapient beings cannot fight bacterial invasion? It may be that you, indeed, are not truly sapient."
Stung, I answered, "Am a star-travelling species. Hold many worlds."
"Your number in the host is?"
"Currently ten to the ninth operators, one entity. Operators are not sapient, not me.
"Breed to ten times as many, entity becomes smarter?"