"Lewis Padgett - Mimsy Were The Borogoves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Padgett Lewis)

He found some really remarkable gadgets. The afternoon passed all too quickly.
Scott finally put the toys back in the box and lugged it home, grunting and puffing.
He was quite red-faced by the time he arrived at the kitchen door.
His find he hid at the back of the closet in his own room upstairs. The crystal
cube he slipped into his pocket, which already bulged with string, a coil of wire, two
pennies, a wad of tinfoil, a grimy defense stamp, and a chunk of feldspar. Emma,
Scott's two-year-old sister, waddled unsteadily in from the hall and said hello.
"Hello, Slug," Scott nodded, from his altitude of seven years and some months.
Hie patronized Emma shockingly, but she didn't know the difference. Small, plump,
and wide-eyed, she flopped down on the carpet and stared dolefully at her shoes.
"Tie 'em, Scotty, please?"
"Sap," Scott told her kindly, but knotted the laces. "Dinner ready yet?"
Emma nodded.
"Let's see your hands." For a wonder they were reasonably clean, though
probably not aseptic. Scott regarded his own paws thoughtfully and, grimacing,
went to the bathroom, where he made a sketchy toilet. The tadpoles had left their
traces.


Dennis Paradine and his wife Jane were having a cocktail before dinner,
downstairs in the living room. He was a youngish, middle-aged man with gray-shot
hair and a thinnish, prim-mouthed face; he taught philosophy at the university. Jane
was small, neat, dark, and very pretty. She sipped her Martini and said:
"New shoes. Like 'em?"
"Here's to crime," Paradine muttered absently. "Huh? Shoes? Not now. Wait till
I've finished this. I had a bad day."
"Exams?"
"Yeah. Flaming youth aspiring toward manhood. I hope they die. In considerable
agony. Insh'Allah!"
"I want the olive," Jane requested.
"I know," Paradine said despondently. "It's been years since I've tasted one
myself. In a Martini, I mean. Even if I put six of 'em in your glass, you're still not
satisfied."
"I want yours. Blood brotherhood. Symbolism. That's why."
Paradine regarded his wife balefully and crossed his long legs. "You sound like
one of my students."
"Like that hussy Betty Dawson, perhaps?" Jane unsheathed her nails. "Does she
still leer at you in that offensive way?"
 "She does. The child is a neat psychological problem. Luckily she isn't mine. If
she wereтАФ" Paradine nodded significantly. "Sex consciousness and too many
movies. I suppose she still thinks she can get a passing grade by showing me her
knees. Which are, by the way, rather bony."
Jane adjusted her skirt with an air of complacent pride. Paradine uncoiled himself
and poured fresh Martinis. "Candidly, I don't see the point of teaching those apes
philosophy. They're all at the wrong age. Their habit patterns, their methods of
thinking, are already laid down. They're horribly conservative, not that they'd admit
it. The only people who can understand philosophy are mature adults or kids like
Emma and Scotty."
"Well, don't enroll Scotty in your course," Jane requested. "He isn't ready to be a
Philosophiae Doctor. I hold no brief for child geniuses, especially when it's my