"G. Stanley Weinbaum - The Best of Stanley G Weinbaum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

'Tweel.'
'There we stuck! He gave some clacks that sounded negative, and said something like 'P-p-p-root.'
And that was just the beginning; I was always 'Tick,' but as for him - part of the time he was 'Tweel,' and
part of the time he was 'P-p-p-proot,' and part of the time he was sixteen other noises!
'We just couldn't connect. I tried 'rock,' and I tried 'star,' and 'tree,' and 'fire.' and Lord knows what
else, and try as I would, I couldn't get a single word! Nothing was the same for two successive minutes,
and if that's a language, I'm an alchemist. Finally I gave it up and called him Tweel, and that seemed to
do.
'But Tweel hung on to some of my words. He remembered a couple of them, which I suppose is a
great achievement if you're used to a language you have to make up as you go along. But I couldn't get
the hang of his talk; either I missed some subtle point or we just didn't think alike - and I rather believe
the latter view.
'I've other reasons for believing that. After a while I gave up the language business, and tried
mathematics. I scratched two plus two equals four on the ground, and demonstrated it with pebbles.
Again Tweel caught the idea, and informed me that three plus three equals six. Once more we seemed to
be getting somewhere.
'So, knowing that Tweel had at least a grammar school education, I drew a circle for the sun,
pointing first at it, and then at the last glow of the sun. Then I sketched in Mercury, and Venus, and
Mother Earth, and Mars, and finally, pointing to Mars, I swept my hand around in a sort of inclusive
gesture to indicate that Mars was our current environment. I was working up to putting over the idea that
my home was on the earth.
'Tweel understood my diagram all right. He poked his beak at it, and with a great deal of trilling and
clucking, he added Deimos and Phobos to Mars, and then sketched in the earth's moon!
'Do you see what that proves? It proves that Tweel's race uses telescopes - that they're civilized!'
'Does not!' snapped Harrison. 'The moon is visible from here as a fifth magnitude star. They could
see its revolution with the naked eye.'
'The moon, yes!' said Jarvis. 'You've missed my point. Mercury isn't visible! And Tweel knew of
Mercury because he placed the Moon at the third planet, not the second. If he didn't know Mercury,
he'd put the earth second, and Mars third, instead of fourth! See?'
'Humph!' said Harrison.
'Anyway,' proceeded Jarvis, 'I went on with my lesson. Things were going smoothly, and it looked as
if I could put the idea over. I pointed at the earth on my diagram, and then at myself, and then, to clinch
it, I pointed to myself and then to the earth itself shining bright green almost at the zenith.
'Tweel set up such an excited clacking that I was certain he understood. He jumped up and down,
and suddenly he pointed at himself and then at the sky, and then at himself and at the sky again. He
pointed at his middle and then at Arcturus, at his head and then at Spica, at his feet and then at half a
dozen stars, while I just gaped at him. Then, all of a sudden, he gave a tremendous leap. Man, what a
hop! He shot straight up into the starlight, seventy-five feet if an inch! I saw him silhouetted against the
sky, saw him turn and come down at me head first, and land smack on his beak like a javelin! There he
stuck square in the center of my sun-circle in the sand - a bull's eye!'
'Nuts!' observed the captain. 'Plain nuts!'
'That's what I thought, too! I just stared at him openmouthed while he pulled his head out of the sand
and stood up. Then I figured he'd missed my point, and I went through the whole blamed rigmarole again,
and it ended the same way, with Tweel on his nose in the middle of my picture!'
'Maybe it's a religious rite,' suggested Harrison.
'Maybe,' said Jarvis dubiously. 'Well, there we were. We could exchange ideas up to a certain point,
and then - blooey! Something in us was different, unrelated; I don't doubt that Tweel thought me just as
screwy as I thought him. Our minds simply looked at the world from different viewpoints, and perhaps
his viewpoint is as true as ours. But - we couldn't get together, that's all. Yet, in spite of all difficulties, I
liked Tweel, and I have a queer certainty that he liked me.'