"Pohl, Frederik - The Mother Trip" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pohl Frederick)

Pharmacy and Bette's New York Boutique and the Yazoo-Jackson Consolidated
All-Faith Ashram, looking in the windows. He reads a typed notice about a lost
Australian terrier. He inspects a naked black dummy with no hands, waiting for
the window dresser to return in the morning and give her hands and ball gown. It
is all interesting to him, and back in the spaceship Mawkri and her Get chatter
excitedly among themselves, forgetting to be afraid as they receive his
impressions.
It is not only his sense of vision that is active, it is also his sense of
hearing, although that input does not produce much he considers worth noting.
There are no voices, no footsteps. Overhead there is the sound of a motor, which
he identifies easily enough as a helicopter. It is too far away for him to care
much. He does not realize that it is quartering the city, alert for the sight of
stray humans on the broad, bright street. He does not hear the radio message
that the helicopter pilot transmits to the ground. Back in the spaceship the
rest of the Get could have heard it, did in fact register the radio signal as an
artifact originating nearby, but they did not associate the message with
Moolkri.
Then the black-and-white slides silently around the corner. There is only one
policeman in it. They are not expecting riots of mad killers, only the odd
break-and-grab hoodlum or the hopeful would-be mugger. Moolkri hears the prowl
car. First he hears the faint purr of the motor and whisper of tires, then, only
in the last moment before it skids to a stop beside him, the quick bleat of its
siren. He turns to look. The young cop leaps out. "Hands against the wall!
Spread your feet! Hold it right there! He does not say it like that precisely,
there is brushwood and bayou in his accent, but Moolkri is not attuned to
regional distinctions of dialect. Moolkri submits. It is unfortunate, but it is
all right. He has been ready to submit to human violence, in case it should
develop, ever since he accepted the assignment to explore. Now it appears that
he will not return to the Get, but he does not mind that. The Get will continue.
He does not feel as though he were in danger. He only feels rage, and his rage
races decisively, by means of his fourth and seventh senses, across the world
and into the heavens.
In the spacecraft Mawkri mourns. The Get moves fearfully around her. She had
wished to extend her motherhood to this planet, but it had rejected her. It was
unfortunate since, among other things, it meant the end of sexual intercourse
for her for the rest of her life, but she does not protest, only regrets.
Moolkri opens all the tactile inputs he has bothered to connect in order to
perceive the policeman fully. He observes stimuli identified as pain, heat, body
disorientation, and sex climax denied as the policeman's hand invades his body
spaces. (There turns out to be nothing in the "pockets, nothing at all, Moolkn
had never realized anything should be put there.)
Out of curiosity (he is overdeveloped in curiosity, that is why he is here),
Moolkri increases his audio perception and, translating easily from the
peckerwood English, hears the policeman radio in to see if there is a want on an
unidentified white male pedestrian wearing a cowboy suit, about fifty, five feet
seven, white beard, bald, blue eyes, no visible scars.
Listening in this way is only curiosity on Moolkri's part. It can no longer
affect the outcome, since violence has already been done to him. He waits
patiently, not very long. He hears headquarters report that there is no want on
the described individual. The policeman tells Moolkri he can go. Moolkri adds to