JК
Crashlander :: Нивен Ларри
Страница: 48 из 199Surely Earth was the weirdest of all.
I remember when we threw in the bridge hands and decided to go out for dinner. This was more complicated than it sounds. Elephant hadn't had a chance to change to flatlander styles, and neither of us was fit to be seen in public. Dianna had cosmetics for us.
I succumbed to an odd impulse. I dressed as an albino.
They were body paints, not pills. When I finished applying them, there in the full-length mirror was my younger self. Blood-red irises, snow-white hair, white skin with a tinge of pink: the teenager who had disappeared ages ago, when I was old enough to use tannin pills. I found my mind wandering far back across the decades, to the days when I was a flatlander myself, my feet firmly beneath the ground, my head never higher than seven feet above the desert sands … They found me there before the mirror and pronounced me fit to be seen in public.
I remember that evening when Dianna told me she had known Elephant forever. «I was the one who named him Elephant,» she bragged.
«It's a nickname?»
«Sure,» said Sharrol. «His real name is Gregory Pelton.»
«O-o-oh.» Suddenly all came clear. Gregory Pelton is known among the stars. It is rumored that he owns the thirty-light-year-wide rough sphere called human space, that he earns his income by renting it out. It is rumored that General Products — the all-embracing puppeteer company, now defunct for lack of puppeteers — is a front for Gregory Pelton. It's a fact that his great-to-die-eighth-grandmother invented the transfer booth and that he is rich, rich, rich.
I asked, «Why Elephant? Why that particular nickname?»
Dianna and Sharrol looked demurely at the tablecloth.
Elephant said, «Use your imagination, Bey.»
«On what? What's an elephant, some kind of animal?»
Three faces registered annoyance. I'd missed a joke.
«Tomorrow,» said Elephant, «we'll show you the zoo.»
* * *
There are seven transfer booths in the Zoo of Earth. That'll tell you how big it is. But you're wrong; you've forgotten the two hundred taxis on permanent duty. They're there because the booths are too far apart for walking.
We stared down at dusty, compact animals smaller than starseeds or Bandersnatchi but bigger than anything else I'd ever seen. Elephant said, «See?»
«Yeah,» I said, because the animals showed a compactness and a plodding invulnerability very like Elephant's. And then I found myself watching one of the animals in a muddy pool.
I remember when we threw in the bridge hands and decided to go out for dinner. This was more complicated than it sounds. Elephant hadn't had a chance to change to flatlander styles, and neither of us was fit to be seen in public. Dianna had cosmetics for us.
I succumbed to an odd impulse. I dressed as an albino.
They were body paints, not pills. When I finished applying them, there in the full-length mirror was my younger self. Blood-red irises, snow-white hair, white skin with a tinge of pink: the teenager who had disappeared ages ago, when I was old enough to use tannin pills. I found my mind wandering far back across the decades, to the days when I was a flatlander myself, my feet firmly beneath the ground, my head never higher than seven feet above the desert sands … They found me there before the mirror and pronounced me fit to be seen in public.
I remember that evening when Dianna told me she had known Elephant forever. «I was the one who named him Elephant,» she bragged.
«It's a nickname?»
«Sure,» said Sharrol. «His real name is Gregory Pelton.»
«O-o-oh.» Suddenly all came clear. Gregory Pelton is known among the stars. It is rumored that he owns the thirty-light-year-wide rough sphere called human space, that he earns his income by renting it out. It is rumored that General Products — the all-embracing puppeteer company, now defunct for lack of puppeteers — is a front for Gregory Pelton. It's a fact that his great-to-die-eighth-grandmother invented the transfer booth and that he is rich, rich, rich.
I asked, «Why Elephant? Why that particular nickname?»
Dianna and Sharrol looked demurely at the tablecloth.
Elephant said, «Use your imagination, Bey.»
«On what? What's an elephant, some kind of animal?»
Three faces registered annoyance. I'd missed a joke.
«Tomorrow,» said Elephant, «we'll show you the zoo.»
* * *
There are seven transfer booths in the Zoo of Earth. That'll tell you how big it is. But you're wrong; you've forgotten the two hundred taxis on permanent duty. They're there because the booths are too far apart for walking.
We stared down at dusty, compact animals smaller than starseeds or Bandersnatchi but bigger than anything else I'd ever seen. Elephant said, «See?»
«Yeah,» I said, because the animals showed a compactness and a plodding invulnerability very like Elephant's. And then I found myself watching one of the animals in a muddy pool.