"H. Beam Piper - Naudsonce" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

"All right. Pass that," Loughran conceded. "But if they have telepathy, why do they use spoken words?"

"Oh, I can answer that," Anna said. "Say they communicated by speech originally, and developed their
telepathic faculty slowly and without realizing it. They'd go on using speech, and since the message would
be received telepathically ahead of the spoken message, nobody would pay any attention to the words as
such. Everybody would have a spoken language of his own; it would be sort of the instrumental
accompaniment to the song."

"Some of them don't bother speaking," Karl nodded. They just toot."

"I'll buy that, right away," Loughran agreed. "In mating, or in group-danger situations, telepathy would be
a race-survival characteristic. It would be selected for genetically, and the non-gifted strains would tend
to die out."

It wouldn't do. It wouldn't do at all. He said so.

"Look at their technology. We either have a young race, just emerged from savagery, or an old, stagnant
race. All indications seem to favor the latter. A young race would not have time to develop telepathy as
Anna suggests. An old race would have gone much farther than these people have. Progress is a matter
of communication and pooling ideas and discoveries. Make a trend-graph of technological progress on
Terra; every big jump comes after an improvement in communications. The printing press; railways and
steamships; the telegraph; radio. Then think how telepathy would speed up progress."

The sun was barely past noon meridian before the Svants, who had ventured down into the fields at
sunrise, were returning to the mound-village. In the snooper-screen, they could be seen coming up in
tunics and breechclouts, entering houses, and emerging in long robes. There seemed to be no bows or
spears in evidence, but the big horn sounded occasionally. Paul Meillard was pleased. Even if it had been
by signtalk, which he rated with worm-fishing for trout or shooting sitting rabbits, he had gotten something
across to them. When they went to the village, at 1500, they had trouble getting their lorry down. A
couple of Marines in a jeep had to go in first to get the crowd out of the way. Several of the locals,
including the one with the staff, joined with them; this quick co-operation delighted Meillard. When they
had the lorry down and were all out of it, the dignitary with the staff, his scarlet tablecloth over his yellow
robe, began an oration, apparently with every confidence that he was being understood. In spite of his
objections at lunch, the telepathy theory was beginning to seem more persuasive.

"Give them the Shooting of Dan McJabberwock again," he told Meillard. "This is where we came in
yesterday."

Something Meillard had noticed was exciting him. "Wait a moment. They're going to do something."

They were indeed. The one with the staff and three of his henchmen advanced. The staff bearer touched
himself on the brow. "Fwoonk," he said. Then he pointed to Meillard. "Hoonkle," he said.

"They got it!" Lillian was hugging herself joyfully. "I knew they ought to!"

Meillard indicated himself and said, "Fwoonk."

That wasn't right. The village elder immediately corrected him. The word, it seemed, was, "Fwoonk."

His three companions agreed that that was the word for self, but that was as far as the agreement went.