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

The forensicist was charged with debating all devil's-advocate positions that no
one really cared to espouse, and she was very good at it. The KP pusher (who was
not really called that, but none of their words are much like ours) was detailed
to making things happen. He always urged action, so that nothing desirable would
fail to be done simply because no one bothered to make it occur. Nevertheless,
in this version Moolkri prevailed upon the rest of the Get to lie low in orbit,
and so they did while drones and far-watchers made a saturation study of one
small area of the planet. It was near Arcata, California.
Moolkri became aware, in this version, as he had never otherwise been made aware
during his sheltered life in the Get cluster, that the universe was a diversity
of things. Oh, they had seen other races. They had been journeying for many
subjective years, while the Get spawned and grew and matured; they were near the
end of their journey now, near the time when the Get would have to return to
their home to disperse and mate. But these bipeds were unusual. Some of them
were hairy, some were bald. Skeletally they were quite the same (bar the
occasional malfunction or amputee), but in size and in weight they differed.
Their fragrances, the drones reported, came in a wide variety of osmic
frequencies, most of them not very nice.
It was in behavior, however, that the bipeds exhibited the most amazing
diversity. It was not only that one biped differed from another. The same biped
might behave in differing ways at differing times! They found and labeled one
who was clearly a KP pusher; an hour later she was an empathizer!
Semantic analysis of their communications to each other was equally confusing.
Some of the bipeds were aggressively mission-oriented within themselves:
"I'm a woman, not a doll. (Throwing a wastepaper basket at the male lying in the
bed.) "I've got twenty-two years of rage inside me because of this mother trip
you lay on me! (Slamming a door.)
Moolkri played that tape five times to make sure he had understood it,
marveling, for only a few minutes before it had seemed this pair were preparing
to procreate.
Some of the bipeds were role playing; that is, their mission was assigned from
context:
"Now, gentlemen, please! (Big expression of the lips and corners of the eyes
called "smile. ) "You know that under the American system my client is entitled
to the presumption of innocence. (Eyes turned directly into a television
camera.) "You gentlemen can try this case in your newspapers all you like-and
I'm not saying you shouldn't; you have a right to freedom of expression; and I
approve that right !-but the State of California Will decide my client's guilt
or innocence, not you. (Decisive up and down movement of the chin and head.)
None of the Get understood any of this, and they stirred and muttered in their
cluster. The forensicist proposed immediate annihilation of the planet. No one
agreed, but still- But still, how could such persons live?
Among Moolkri Mawkri's people, person could not be separated from mission. They
were the same thing. What a person was was what he did. It was the foreseen need
for mission operators that determined how a person was nurtured; it was the
nature of their aptitudes that decided which was chosen for what purpose. There
was no such thing as a split personality in the Get. There was no one who was
unhappy with his life. Moolkri could not play a role. He was always typecast. He
could never attempt to change his image. He was his image.
The Get of Moolkri Mawkri came from a planet of the star Procyon, blue-white and