"Jack Vance - The Demon Princes - complete" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

tinction. Their metabolism puzzled him, and also the nature of their
life cycle, though gradually he acquired at least a glimmer of en-
lightenment. He assumed, to begin with, that they derived a certain
degree of energy from some sort of photosynthetic process.

Then one morning, as Teehalt contemplated a group of dryads
standing immobile in the marshy meadow, a large winged hawklike
creature swooped down, buffeted one of the dryads to the side. As
it toppled Teehalt glimpsed two white shafts, or prongs, extending
from the supple gray legs into the ground. The shafts at once re-
tracted when the dryad fell. The hawk creature ignored the toppled
dryad, but scratched and tore at the marsh and unearthed an enor-
mous white grub. Teehalt watched with great interest. The dryad
apparently had located the grub in its subterranean burrow and had
pierced it with a sort of proboscis, presumably for the ingestion of
sustenance. Teehalt felt a small pang of shame and disillusionment.
The dryads were evidently not quite as innocent and ethereal as he
had thought them to be.

The hawk thing lumbered up from the pit, croaked, coughed,

14

THE DEMON PRINCES

flapped away. Teehalt went curiously forward, stared down at the
mangled worm. There was little to be seen but shreds of pallid flesh,
yellow ooze and a hard black ball, the size of Teehalt's two fists.
As he stared down, the dryads came slowly fonvard and Teehalt
withdrew. From a distance he watched as they clustered about the
torn worm, and it seemed to Teehalt that they mourned the man-
gled crearure. But presently, with their supple lower limbs, they
brought up the black pod and one of them carried it away high in
its branches. Teehalt followed at a distance, watched in fascinated
wonder as, close beside a grove of slender white-branched trees, the
dryads buried the black pod.

In retrospect he wondered why he had attempted no commu-
nication with the dryads. Once or twice during the time of his stay
he had toyed with the idea, then let the thought drift awayтАФper-
haps because he felt himself an intruder, a creature gross and un-
pleasant. The dryads in their turn treated him with what might be
courteous disinterest.

Three days after the black pod had been buried Teehalt had
occasion to return to the grove, and to his astonishment saw a pallid
shoot rising from the ground above the pod. At the tip pale green
leaves already were unfolding into the sunlight. Teehalt stood back,
examined the grove with new interest: had each of these trees
grown from a pod originated in the body of a subterranean grub?