"William Tenn - The Flat-Eyed Monster" - читать интересную книгу автора (William Tenn)
Clyde Manship was now listeningЧor receivingЧso hard that the two halves of his brain seemed to grind against each other. He was very much interested in astroнnomical unit 649-301-3 and anything that made travel to it easier or more difficult, however exotic the method of transportation employed might be by prevailing terнrestrial standards.
"And the reason, of course," the young explorer went on, "is a practical one. Menнtal dwindle. Good old mental dwindle. In two hundred years of solving every probнlem connected with space travel, we haven't so much as pmbffed the surface of that one. All we have to do is go a measly twenty light-years from the surface of our home planet and mental dwindle sets in with a bang. The brightest crews start acting like retarded children and, if they don't turn back right away, their minds go out like so many lights: they've dwindled mentally smack down to zero."
It figured, Manship decided excitedly, it figured. A telepathic race like the flefnobes...why, of course! Accustomed since earliest infancy to having the mental aura of the entire species about them at all times, dependent completely on telepathy for communication since there had never been a need for developing any other method, what loneliness, what ultimate magnification of loneliness, must they not feel once their ships had reached a point too far from their world to maintain contact!
And their education nowЧManship could only guess at the educational system of a creature so different from himself, but surely it must be a kind of high-order and continual mental osmosis, a mutual mental osmosis. However it worked, their eduнcational system probably accentuated the involvement of the individual with the group. Once the feeling of involvement became too tenuous, because of intervening barrier or overpowering stellar distance, the flefnobe's psychological disintegration was inevitable.
But all this was unimportant. There were interstellar spaceships in existence! There were vehicles that could take Clyde Manship back to Earth, back to Kelly University and the work-in-progress he hoped would eventually win him a full professorship in Comparative Literature: Style vs. Content in Fifteen Representative Corporation Reports to Minority Stockholders for the Period 1919-1931.
For the first time, hope sprang within his breast. A moment later, it was lying on its back and massaging a twisted knee. Because assume, just assume for the sake of arнgument, his native intelligence told him, that he could somehow get out of this place and pick his way about what was, by every indication, a complete oddity of a world, until he found the spaceships Rabd had mentionedЧcould it ever be believed by any imagination no matter how wild or fevered, his native intelligence continued, that he, Clyde Manship, whose fingers were all thumbs and whose thumbs were all knuckнles, whose mechanical abilities would have made Swanscombe Man sneer and Sinanthropus snicker, could it ever be believed, his native intelligence inquired sarнdonically, that he'd be capable of working out the various gadgets of advanced spaceнship design, let alone the peculiarities that highly unusual creatures like the flefnobes would inevitably have incorporated into their vessels?
Clyde Manship was forced to admit morosely that the entire project was someнwhat less than possible. But he did tell his native intelligence to go straight to hell.
Rabd now, though. Rabd could pilot him back to Earth if (a) Rabd found it worthнwhile personally and if (b) Rabd could be communicated with. Well, what interested Rabd most? Evidently this Mental Dwindle ranked quite high.
"If you'd come up with an answer to that, Professor," he was expostulating at this point, "I would cheer so hard I'd unship my glrnk. That's what's kept us boxed up here at the center of the galaxy for too many years. That's the practical problem. But when you haul this Qrm-forsaken blob of protoplasm out of its hole halfway across the universe and ask me what I think of it, I must tell you the whole business leaves me completely dry. This, to me, is not a practical experiment."
Manship caught the mental ripples of a nod from Rabd's father. "I'm forced to agree with you, son. Impractical and dangerous. And I think I can get the rest of the council to see it my way. Far too much has been spent on this project already."
As the resonance of their thoughts decreased slightly in volume, Manship deduced they were leaving the laboratory.
He heard the beginnings of a desperate, "ButЧbutЧ" from Lirld. Then, off in the distance, Councilor Glomg, evidently having dismissed the scientist, asked his son a question, "And where is little Tekt? I thought she'd be with you."
"Oh, she's out at the landing field," Rabd answered, "supervising last-minute stuff going into the ship. After all, we begin our mating flight tonight."
"A wonderful female," Glomg told him in a "voice" that was now barely audible. "You're a very lucky flefnobe."
"I know that, Pop," Rabd assured him. "Don't think I don't know that. The most plentiful bunch of eye-ended tentacles this side of Gansibokkle and they're mine, all mine!"
"Tekt is a warm and highly intelligent female flefnobe," his father pointed out seнverely from a great distance. "She has many fine qualities. I don't like you acting as if the mating process were a mere matter of the number of eye-ended tentacles posнsessed by the female."
"Oh, it isn't, Pop," Rabd assured him. "It isn't at all. The mating process is a grave andЧer, a serious matter to me. Full of responsibilitiesЧer, serious responsibiliнties. Yes, sir. Highly serious. But the fact that Tekt has over a hundred and seventy-six slime-washed tentacles, each topped by a lovely, limpid eye, won't do our relationнship a bit of harm. Quite the contrary, Pop, quite the contrary."
"A superstitious old crank and a brash bumpkin," Professor Lirld commented bitterly. "But between them, they can have my appropriation shut off, Srin. They can stop my work. Just when it's showing positive results. We've got to prepare counter-measures!"
Manship was not interested in this all-too-familiar academic despair, however. He was straining desperately after the receding minds of Glomg and Rabd. Not that he was at all intrigued by the elder's advice on How to Have a Sane and Happy Sex Life Though Married.
What had excited him prodigiously was a mental by-product of a much earlier comment. When Rabd had mentioned the last-minute loading of his ship, another part of the flefnobe's mind had, as if stimulated by association, dwelt briefly on the construction of the small vessel, its maintenance and, most important, its operation.
For just a few seconds, there had been a flash of a control panel with varicolored lights going on and off, and the beginnings of long-ago, often-repeated instruction: "To warm up the motors of the Bulvonn Drive, first gently rotate the uppermost three cylinders...Gently now!"
It was the kind of subliminal thought-picture, Manship realized excitedly, that had emanated from Srin a short while ago, and had enabled him to guess that the shifting light-patterns on the sphere the laboratory assistant held were actually meter readings. Evidently, his sensitivity to the flefnobe brain went deeper than the mental statements that were consciously transmitted by it and penetrated, if not the unconнscious mind, at least the less submerged areas of personal awareness and memory.
But this meantЧthis meantЧseated as he was, he still managed to stagger at the concept. A little practice, just a little acquired skill, and he could no doubt pick the brain of every flefnobe on the planet.
He sat and glowed at the thought. An ego that had never been particularly robust had been taking an especially ferocious pounding in the past half-hour under the contemptuous scrutiny of a hundred turquoise eyes and dozens of telepathic gibes. A personality that had been power-starved most of its adult life abruptly discovered it might well hold the fate of an entire planet in the hollow of its cerebrum.
Manship remembered. His euphoria dwindled like a spat-upon match. There was only one piece of information he desired, only one thing he wanted to know. How to get home!
One of the few creatures on this planet, possibly the only one for all he knew, whose thoughts were of a type to make this possible, was on his way with his father to some flefnobe equivalent of Tony's Bar and Grill. Rabd had, in fact, to judge from the siнlence reigning on the subject, just this moment passed out of effective telepathic range.
With a hoarse, anguished, yearning cry, similar to that of a bull whoЧhaving got in a juicy lick with his horns and having been carried by the momentum of his rush the full length of the bull-ringЧturns, only to see the attendants dragging the wounded matador out of the arena...with precisely that sort of thoroughly dismayed bellow, Clyde Manship reached up, tore the surrounding material apart with one mighty two-handed gesture, and leaped to his feet on the in-and-out curving tabletop.
"...And seven or eight charts in full color, representing the history of teleportation prior to this experiment," Lirld was telling his assistant at that moment. "In fact, Srin, if you have time to make three-dimensional charts, the Council is even more likely to be impressed. We're in a fight, Srin, and we've got to use everyЧ"
His thoughts broke off as an eyestalk curled around and regarded Manship. A moment later his entire complement of eyestalks as well as those of his assistant swished about and stopped, quivering, with their focus on the erect, emergent human.
"Holy, concentrated Qrm," the professor's mind barely transmitted the quavering thought. "The flat-eyed monster. It's broken loose!"
"Out of a cage of solid paper!" Srin added in awe.
Lirld came to a decision. "The blaster," he ordered peremptorily. "Tentacle me the blaster, Srin. Appropriation or no appropriation, we don't dare take chances with a creature like this. We're in a crowded city. Once it got out on a rampageЧ" He shudнdered the entire black suitcase length of him. He made a rapid adjustment in the curlicued instrument that Srin had given him. He pointed it at Manship.
Having actually fought his way out of the paper bag, Manship had paused, irresoнlute, on the tabletop. Far from being a man of action in any sense, he now found himself distinctly puzzled as to just which way to act. He had no idea of the direction taken by Glomg pere and fils; furthermore he was at a loss as he looked around for anything that in any way resembled a door. He regretted very much that he had not noticed through which aperture Rabd had entered the room when the younger flefnobe had joined their jolly little circle.
He had just about made up his mind to look into a series of zigzag indentations in the opposite wall when he observed Lirld pointing the blaster at him with determined if unprofessional tremulousness. His mind, which had been filing the recent conнversation between professor and assistant in an uninterested back-portion, suddenly informed him that he was about to become the first, and probably unrecorded vicнtim, in a War of Worlds.
"Hey!" he yelped, entirely forgetting his meager powers of communication. "I just want to look up Rabd. I'm not going on any rampЧ"
Lirld did something to the curlicued instrument that seemed like winding a clock, but was probably more equivalent to the pressing of a trigger. He simultaneously shut all of his eyesЧno mean feat in itself.
That, Clyde Manship reflected laterЧwhen there was time and space to reflectЧwas the only thing which saved his life. That and the prodigious sideways broad-jump he made as millions of crackling red dots ripped out of the instrument toward him.
The red dots sped past his pajama-tops and into one of the lower vaults that made up the ceiling. Without a sound, a hole some ten feet in circumference appeared in the masonry. The hole was deep enoughЧsome three or four feetЧto let the night sky of the planet show through. A heavy haze of white powder drifted down like the dust from a well-beaten rug.
Staring at it, Manship felt the roll of tiny glaciers toward his heart. His stomach flattened out against its abdominal wall and tried to skulk quietly around his ribs. He had never felt so completely frightened in his life. "Hey-y-yЧ" he began.
"A little too much power, Professor," Srin observed judiciously from where he rested easily with tentacles outspread against the wall. "A little too much power and not enough glrnk. Try a little more glrnk and see what happens."
"Thank you," Lirld told him gratefully. "Like this, you mean?"
He raised and pointed the instrument again.
"Hey-y-y!" Manship continued in the same vein as before, not so much because he felt the results of such a statement would be particularly rewarding as because he lacked, at the moment, the creative faculties for another, more elaborate comment. "Hey-y-y-y!" he repeated between chattering teeth, staring at Lirld out of eyes no longer entirely flat.
He held up a shaking, admonishing hand. Fear was gibbering through him like the news of panic through a nation of monkeys. He watched the flefnobe make the peculiar winding trigger adjustment again. His thoughts came to a stop and every muscle in his body seemed to tense unendurably.
Suddenly Lirld shook. He slid backward along the tabletop. The weapon dropped out of stiffened tentacles and smashed into bunches of circular wires that rolled in all directions. "Srin!" his mind whimpered. "Srin! The monsterЧDoЧdo you see what's coming out of his eyes? He'sЧhe'sЧ"
His body cracked open and a pale, blue goo poured out. Tentacles dropped off him like so many long leaves in a brisk autumn wind. The eyes that studded his surнface turned from turquoise to a dull brown. "Srin!" he begged in a tiny, faraway thought. "Help meЧthe flat-eyed monster isЧhelpЧhelp!"
And then he dissolved. Where he had been, there was nothing but a dark liquid, streaked with blue, that flowed and bubbled and dripped off the curving edge of the table.
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