"A. E. Van Vogt - The Silkie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Vogt A E)

transparent wall he saw the water inside.

A basic longing in Cemp twinged with anticipatory pleasure. He reacted with a startled shudder, thinking
in dismay,Am I that close to the change?

Cemp, in the C-Silkie stage entirely a creature of space, settled awkwardly on the deck. The special
bone structures that had once been legs were sensitive to molecular activity within solid masses;
therefore, it was through energy interchanges within the bone itself that he felt himself touch the metal.

In a sense, then, he stood there. But he balanced himself with energy flows and not with muscular
contractions and expansions. There were no muscles. It was with magnetic force that he attached himself
to the deck and with internal control that he moved, one after the other, the virtually solid blocks of highly
differentiated bone.

He walked forward like a two-legged being, feeling the stretch of the elasticised bone of his legs.
Walking was an intricate procedure for him. It meant softening the tough bone each time, then
rehardening it. Although he had learned long ago how to walk, still he was slow. He who could streak
through space at fifty G's acceleration walked on the deck of the V liner at a mile an hour and was happy
that he could show a semblance of movement in such an environment.

He walked to where the V's stood, pausing a few feet from the nearest chunky figure.

At first look, a V seemed to be a slightly smaller Silkie, but Cemp knew that these bitter creatures were
Variants тАФ V for Variant. It was always difficult to determine which type of V one was looking at The
differences were internal and not readily detectable. So he had his first purpose тАФ to establish the
identity of the V's on this ship.

To communicate his message, he utilised that function of his brain which, before it was understood, had
been labeled telepathy.

There was a pause, and then a V who had stood well back in the group replied, with the same
communication method, 'We have a reason, sir, for not identifying ourselves. And so we ask you to
please bear with us until you understand our problems.'

'Secrecy is illegal,' Cemp replied curtly.

The answer was surprisingly free of the usual V hostility. 'We are not trying to be difficult. My name is
Ralden, and we want you to see something.'

'What?'

'A boy, now nine years old. He's the V child of a Silkie and a breather, and he recently showed extreme
variant qualities. We want permission to destroy him.'

'Oh!' said Cemp. He was instantly disturbed. He had a fleeting awareness that his son, from his own first
mating period, would now be nine.
Relationship, of course, didn't matter. Silkies never saw their children, and his training required him to
put all Silkie offspring on the same footing. But in the uneasy peace that reigned among the ordinary
humans, the Special People, and the two surviving classes of Silkies, one of the nightmares was that a
high-ability V would show up someday in the unstable world of Variants.