"Tom Purdom-Research Project" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

1945.
 Postri-Dem's best friend at that time had been a child he eventually addressed as Rapor-If. For her,
their first views of the flickering images had been an occasion for displays of shrieks and wild hand
waving. For him, it had been the beginning of the great adventure of his life. He realized immediately that
the universe had presented him with a giant experiment in the relationship between biology and culture.
On two worlds, forty-eight light years apart, the blind forces of chance had created two conscious,
intelligent species -- and one of them, contrary to all expectations, was apparently predatory and
semi-carnivorous.
***


Jinny's reader includes a complete, illustrated children's encyclopedia. On her desk, there is an
interactive forty-thousand volume children's library. She is fascinated by the results she gets when she
touches "semaphore telegraph" and "second military holocaust of the century" with her finger. The
language of the second reference creates some problems for the encyclopedia but she manages to work
it out and the reader eventually refers her to the library. She plugs the reader into the library box and
spends another twenty minutes putting together an outline of the conflict the people of the twentieth
century called the Second World War.
Dr. Mazzeri's reference to Giuseppe Verdi sends her back to the library once again. She has been
"exposed" to opera but this is the first time she has wondered why human society has produced a form of
theater in which the actors sing their lines. Her father knocks on the door just as she is succumbing to
temptation and starting to query a reference to Chinese opera.
Jinny's father is a tall man with a frame that is so thin he looks almost frail. He is home today because
he is attending a conference. He has spent the last three hours in his office nook, scanning presentations
and exchanging comments and questions with the other participants. Jinny's mother usually works at
home but today she's taking a look at two missile defense sites near Binghamton. Every month Jinny's
mother is supposed to spend a day talking to "on-site personnel" and doing "hands-on work" with
"honest hardware."
Jinny's father looks blank when she tells him she's writing a report on Postri-Dem.
"Postri-Dem?"
"The alien. The ifli."
Her father raises his eyebrows. "What made you pick him?"
Jinny frowns. It's the kind of question she never knows how to answer. Then she smiles. "I thought Dr.
Mazzeri looked like you, Daddy. The scientist who went to Mars. I thought he looked nice."
Her father rubs her head. Jinny looks up at him, wide-eyed, and he presses her against his leg.
***


Our first discussion session after the meeting took place the next morning. Maria and I were eating our
four hundred and forty-fourth snack bar breakfast and resolutely ignoring any visions of black coffee and
fresh rolls that happened to wander into our minds. The brown spheres Postri-Dem was eating provided
him with a combination of texture and flavor he had loved since he was a child -- a mildly crunchy
exterior, with a sweet, smooth cream in the middle. He had started stuffing them into his mouth three at a
time long before we had finished the first hour of our session.
Postri-Dem spent most of our sessions lying in a hammock placed a few steps in front of our links. A
communication unit built into the frame of the hammock connected him to the base information system.
Three steps behind him, Stridi-If would stand against a wall, politely nibbling on a finger-food. Her
favorite was a thin red stick that was almost as long as her arm.
***