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

village, yesterday. She'd say something, I'd repeat it, and she'd tell us it was wrong and say the same
thing over again. Lillian took recordings; she got the same results as last night. Ask her about it later."

"She has the same effect on Mom as on the others?"

"Yes. Mom was very polite and tried not to show it, butтАФ"

Lillian took him aside, out of earshot of the two Svants, after lunch. She was almost distracted.

"Mark, I don't know what I'm going to do. She's like the others. Every time I open my mouth in front of
her, she's simply horrified. It's as though my voice does something loathsome to her. And I'm the one
who's supposed to learn to talk to them."

"Well, those who can do, and those who can't teach," he told her. "You can study recordings, and tell us
what the words are and teach us how to recognize and pronounce them. You're the only linguist we
have."

That seemed to comfort her a little. He hoped it would work out that way. If they could communicate
with these people and did leave a party here to prepare for the first colonization, he'd stay on, to teach
the natives Terran technologies and study theirs. He'd been expecting that Lillian would stay, top. She
was the linguist; she'd have to stay. But now, if it turned out that she would be no help but a liability, she'd
go back with the Hubert Penrose. Paul wouldn't keep a linguist who offended the natives' every
sensibility with every word she spoke. He didn't want that to happen. Lillian and he had come to mean a
little too much to each other to be parted now.

Paul Meillard and Karl Dorver had considerable difficulty with Mom, that afternoon. They wanted her to
go with them and help trade for cattle. Mom didn't want to; she was afraid. They had to do a lot of
playacting, with half a dozen Marines pretending to guard her with fixed bayonets from some of Dave
Questell's Navy construction men who had red bandannas on their heads to simulate combs before she
got the idea. Then she was afraid to get into the contragravity lorry that was to carry the hoes and the
wagon wheels. Sonny managed to reassure her, and insisted on going along, and he insisted on taking his
ax with him. That meant doubling the guard, to make sure Sonny didn't lose his self-control when he saw
his former persecutors within chopping distance.

It went off much better than either Paul Meillard or Luis Gofredo expected. After the first shock of being
air-borne had worn off, Mom found that she liked contragravity-riding; Sonny was wildly delighted with it
from the start. The natives showed neither of them any hostility. Mom's lavender bathrobe and Sonny's
green coveralls and big ax seemed to be symbols of a new and exalted status; even the Lord Mayor was
extremely polite to them.

The Lord Mayor and half a dozen others got a contragravity ride, too, to the meadows to pick out cattle.
A dozen animals, including a pair of the two-ton draft beasts, were driven to the Terran camp. A couple
of lorry-loads of assorted vegetables were brought in, too. Everybody seemed very happy about the
deal, especially Bennet Fa-yon. He wanted to slaughter one of the sheep-sized meat-and-milk animals at
once and get to work on it. Gofredo advised him to put it off till the next morning. He wanted a large
native audience to see the animal being shot with a rifle.

The water tower was finished, and the big spherical tank hoisted on top of it and made fast. A pump, and
a filter-system were installed. There was no water for hot showers that evening, though. They would have
to run a pipeline to the river, and that would entail a ditch that would cut through several cultivated fields,