"Stanley G. Weinbaum - Proteus Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

form erect, stretched, and gazed toward the matted tangle of plant life under the tree ferns.

He was hungry, and somewhere in there was breakfast, either fruit or bird. Those represented the entire
range of choice, since he was not at present hungry enough to consider any of the other possible
variationsтАФrat, bat, or dog. That covered the fauna of these islands.

Did it, indeed? He frowned as sudden remembrance struck him. What of the wild, yellow-eyed imp that
had snarled at him from the brookside? He had forgotten that in the excitement of the desertion of Kolu
and Malloa. That was certainly neither bat, rat, nor dog. What was it?

Still frowning, he felt his gun, glancing to assure himself of its readiness The two Maoris might have been
frightened away by an imaginary menace, but the thing by the brook was something he could not ascribe
to superstition. He had seen that. He frowned more deeply as he recalled the tailed bat of earlier in the
preceding evening. That was no native fancy either.
He strode toward the fern forest. Suppose Austin Island did harbor a few mutants, freaks, and individual
species. What of it? So much the better; it justified the Fortune expedition. It might contribute to the
fame of one Alan Carver, zoologist, if he were the first to report this strange, insular animal world. And
yetтАФit was queer that Mawson had said nothing of it, nor had the whalers.

At the edge of the forest he stopped short. Suddenly he perceived what was responsible for its aspect of
queerness. He saw what Malloa had meant when he gestured toward the trees. He gazed incredulously,
peering from tree to tree. It was true. There were no related species. There were no two trees alike. Not
two alike. Each was individual in leaf, bark, stem. There were no two the same. No two trees were
alike!

But that was impossible. Botanist or not, he knew the impossibility of it. It was all the more impossible on
a remote islet where inbreeding must of necessity take place. The living forms might differ from those of
other islands, but not from each otherтАФat least, not in such incredible profusion. The number of species
must be limited by the very intensity of competition on an island. Must be!

Carver stepped back a half dozen paces, surveying the forest wall. It was true. There were ferns
innumerable; there were pines; there were deciduous treesтАФbut there were, in the hundred yard stretch
he could scan accurately, no two alike! No two, even, with enough similarity to be assigned to the same
species, perhaps not even to the same genus.

He stood frozen in uncomprehending bewilderment. What was the meaning of it? What was the origin of
this unnatural plenitude of species and genera? How could any one of the numberless forms reproduce
unless there were somewhere others of its kind to fertilize it? It was true, of course, that blossoms on the
same tree could cross-fertilize each other, but where, then, were the offspring? It is a fundamental aspect
of nature that from acorns spring oaks, and from kauri cones spring kauri pines.

In utter perplexity, he turned along the beach, edging away from the wash of the waves into which he had
almost backed. The solid wall of forest was immobile save where the sea breeze ruffled its leaves, but all
that Carver saw was the unbelievable variety of those leaves. NowhereтАФnowhereтАФwas there a single
tree that resembled any he had seen before.

There were compound leaves, and digitate, palmate, cordate, acuminate, bipinnate, and ensiform ones.
There were specimens of every variety he could name, and even a zoologist can name a number if he has
worked with a botanist like Halburton. But there were no specimens that looked as if they might be
related, however distantly, to any one of the others. It was as if, on Austin Island, the walls between the