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

another animal, with a pole travois. He made gestures. A travois dragged; it went slow. A wagon had
wheels that went around; it went fast.

So Lillian and Anna thought he was the village half-wit. Village genius, more likely; the other peasants
didn't understand him, and resented his superiority. They went over for a closer look at the wheels, and
pushed them. Sonny was almost beside himself. Mom was puzzled, but she thought they were pretty
wonderful.

Then they looked at blacksmith tools. Tongs; Sonny had never seen anything like them. Howell
wondered what the Svants used to handle hot metal; probably big tweezers made by tying two green
sticks together. There was an old Arabian legend that Allah had made the first tongs and given them to
the first smith, because nobody could make tongs without having a pair already.
Sonny didn't understand the fan blower until it was taken apart. Then he made a great discovery. The
wheels, and the fan, and the pivoted tongs, all embodied the same principle, one his people had evidently
never discovered. A whole new world seemed to open before him from then on, he was constantly
finding things pierced and rotating on pivots.

By this time, Mom was fidgeting again. She ought to be doing something to justify her presence in the
camp. He was wondering what sort of work he could invent for her when Karl Dorver called to him from
the door of the head-quarters hut.

"Mark, can you spare Mom for a while?" he asked. "We want her to look at pictures and show us which
of the animals are meat-cattle, and which of the crops are ripe." Think you can get anything out of her?"
Sign-talk, yes. We may get a few words from her, too."

At first, Mom was unwilling to leave Sonny. She finally decided that it would be safe, and trotted over to
Dorver, entering the hut.

Dave Questell's construction crew began at once on the water tank using a power shovel to dig the
foundation. They had to haul water in a tank from the river a quarter-mile away to mix the concrete.
Sonny watched that interestedly. So did a number of the villagers, who gathered safely out of bowshot.
They noticed Sonny among the Terrans and pointed at him. Sonny noticed that. He unobtrusively picked
up a double-bitted ax and kept it to hand.

He and Mom had lunch with the contact team. As they showed no ill effects from breakfast, Fayon
decided that it was safe to let them have anything the Terrans ate or drank. They liked wine; they knew
what it was, all right, but this seemed to have a delightfully different flavor. They each tried a cigarette,
choked over the first few puffs, and decided that they didn't like smoking.

"Mom gave us a lot of information, as far as she could, on the crops and animals. The big things, the size
of rhinoceroses, are draft animals and nothing else; they're not eaten," Dorver said. "I don't know
whether the meat isn't good, or is taboo, or they are too valuable to eat. They eat all the other three
species, and milk two of them. I have an idea they grind their grain in big stone mortars as needed."

That was right; he'd seen things like that. Willi, when you're over in the mountains, see if you can find
something we can make millstones out of. We can shape them with sono-cutters; after they get the idea,
they can do it themselves by hand. One of those big animals could be used to turn the mill. Did you get
any words from her?"

Paul Meillard shook his head gloomily. "Nothing we can be sure of. It was the same thing as in the