Cities in Flight James Blish

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the scattered ganglia which served it, however badly, for a brain, and
concluded that its long soulful stare at Estelle was doing it no good at all.
Simultaneously one of its limbs, which had the whole time
been inching in the,, direction of one of the melon rinds, suddenly passed a
threshold and telegraphed back to the rest of the animal the implications of
that now faint spicy odor. All the rest of Ernest flowed eagerly into that arm
and bunched itself around the rind; and then the polyp was rolling helplessly
down the hill, curled into a ball, with the melon rind clutched firmly in the
middle. As it rolled, it emitted a small thrilling whistle of alarm which made
Web's back -hairs stir-it was the first time he had ever heard a svengali make
a sound-but it would not let go of its prize; it came to rest in the middle of
a rivulet in the valley, and was washed gently downstream out of sight, still
faintly protesting and avidly digesting. "There goes Ernest," Web said.
"I know. I heard him. He's such a stupid. But he'll be back. Your grandmother
will be here too. Once the Mayor and Miramon and Dr. Schloss and the rest
decided to stay on He, because of all the work they have to do here, they had
to send home for somebody to take care of us. They don't think we can take
care of ourselves. They wouldn't let us go knocking all around a strange
planet all by ourselves."
"Maybe not," Web said reluctantly. He tested the proposition; it seemed to
hold water. "But why would it have to be grandmother?"
"Well, it wouldn't be Daddy, because he has to stay on New Earth and work on
the New Earth part of the problem that we're working on here," Estelle said.
"And it wouldn't be your grandfather because he has to stay home on New Earth
and be mayor while Mayor Amalfi's here. It wouldn't be my mother because
they're not scientists or philosophers and would just clutter up He even more
than we're doing. If they're going to fly anyone out here to oversee us, it
has to be your grandmother."
"I suppose so," Web said. "That'll put a crimp in us, for sure."
"It'll do more than that," Estelle said tranquilly. "She'll send us home."
"She wouldn't do that!"
"Yes she would. That's the way they think. She'll be practical about it."
"That's not being practical," Web protested. "It's treachery, that's what it
is. She can't come all the way here to take care of us on He, just as an
excuse to take us off He."
Estelle did not reply. After a moment Web opened his eyes, belatedly realizing
that a shadow had fallen across his face. The Hevian boy who had given Estelle
the melon was standing above them, deferentially, respecting their silence,
but obviously poised to renew the game when they were ready. Behind him, the
heads of the other Hevian children bobbed over the hill, obviously wondering
what the strangers and their boneless odd-smelling pet would do next, but
leaving the initiative to their spokesman. "Hello," Estelle said, sitting up
again. "Hello," the tall boy said hesitantly. "Yes?" For a moment he seemed
baffled; then, making the best of the situation, he sat down and went on hi as
simple a Hevian as he could contrive.
"You are rested. Yes? Shall we play another game?" "No more for me," Web said,
almost indignantly. "Then play Matrix yesterday, tomorrow sometime day. Yes?"
"No, no," the Hevian boy said. "Not Matrix. This is another game, a resting
game. You play it sitting down. We call it the lying game." "Oh. How works
it?"
"Everyone takes turns. Each tells a story. It must be a real story, without
any truth in it. The other players are the jury. You gain a point for
everything in the story that is clearly true. The low score wins."
"I lost about five key words in there somewhere," Estelle said to Web. "How
does it go again?"
Web explained quickly. Although his spoken command of the Hevian language was
limited to the tenses of past indictable, present excitable and future
irredeemable, his vocabulary a thoroughly unbotanical mixture of stems and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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