The following day, he located the flint vein2 on the other side of the gorge3 and spent most of the morning blasting away the sandstone above it. The next time he went into Mallorysport, he decided4, he was going to shop around for a good power-shovel. He had to blast a channel to keep the little stream from damming up on him. He didn’t get any flint cracked at all that day. There was another harpy circling around the camp when he got back; he chased it with the manipulator and shot it down with his pistol. Harpies probably found Fuzzies as tasty as Fuzzies found land-prawns5. The family were all sitting under the gunrack when he entered the living room.
The next day he cracked flint, and found three more stones. It really looked as though he had found the Dying Place of the Jellyfish at that. He knocked off early that afternoon, and when he came in sight of the camp, he saw an airjeep grounded on the lawn and a small man with a red beard in a faded Khaki bush-jacket sitting on the bench by the kitchen door, surrounded by Fuzzies. There was a camera and some other equipment laid up where the Fuzzies couldn’t get at it. Baby Fuzzy, of course, was sitting on his head. He looked up and waved, and then handed Baby to his mother and rose to his feet.
“Well, what do you think of them, Ben?” Jack called down, as he grounded the manipulator.
“My God, don’t start me on that now!” Ben Rainsford replied, and then laughed. “I stopped at the constabulary post on the way home. I thought George Lunt had turned into the biggest liar6 in the known galaxy7. Then I went home, and found your call on the recorder, so I came over here.”
“Been waiting long?”
The Fuzzies had all abandoned Rainsford and come trooping over as soon as the manipulator was off contragravity. He climbed down among them, and they followed him across the grass, catching8 at his trouser legs and yeeking happily.
“Not so long.” Rainsford looked at his watch. “Good Lord, three and half hours is all. Well, the time passed quickly. You know, your little fellows have good ears. They heard you coming a long time before I did.”
“I should say! I got a lot of movies of it.” He shook his head slowly. “Jack, this is almost incredible.”
“You’re staying for dinner, of course?”
“You try and chase me away. I want to hear all about this. Want you to make a tape about them, if you’re willing.”
“Glad to. We’ll do that after we eat.” He sat down on the bench, and the Fuzzies began climbing upon and beside him. “This is the original, Little Fuzzy. He brought the rest in a couple of days later. Mamma Fuzzy, and Baby Fuzzy. And these are Mike and Mitzi. I call this one Ko-Ko, because of the ceremonious way he beheads land-prawns.”
“George says you call them all Fuzzies. Want that for the official designation?”
“Sure. That’s what they are, isn’t it?”
“Well, let’s call the order Hollowayans,” Rainsford said. “Family, Fuzzies; genus, Fuzzy. Species, Holloway’s Fuzzy—Fuzzy fuzzy holloway. How’ll that be?”
That would be all right, he supposed. At least, they didn’t try to Latinize things in extraterrestrial zoology10 any more.
“Yes, of course. George was telling me you thought they’d come down from the north; about the only place they could have come from. This is probably just the advance guard; we’ll be having Fuzzies all over the place before long. I wonder how fast they breed.”
“Not very fast. Three males and two females in this crowd, and only one young one.” He set Mike and Mitzi off his lap and got to his feet. “I’ll go start dinner now. While I’m doing that, you can look at the stuff they brought in with them.”
When he had placed the dinner in the oven and taken a couple of highballs into the living room, Rainsford was still sitting at the desk, looking at the artifacts. He accepted his drink and sipped12 it absently, then raised his head.
“Jack, this stuff is absolutely amazing,” he said.
“It’s better than that. It’s unique. Only collection of native weapons and implements13 on Zarathustra.”
Ben Rainsford looked up sharply. “You mean what I think you mean?” he asked. “Yes; you do.” He drank some of his highball, set down the glass and picked up the polished-horn prawn-killer. “Anything—pardon, anybody—who does this kind of work is good enough native for me.” He hesitated briefly14. “Why, Jack this tape you said you’d make. Can I transmit a copy to Juan Jimenez? He’s chief mammalogist with the Company science division; we exchange information. And there’s another Company man I’d like to have hear it. Gerd van Riebeek. He’s a general xeno-naturalist, like me, but he’s especially interested in animal evolution.”
“Why not? The Fuzzies are a scientific discovery. Discoveries ought to be reported.”
Little Fuzzy, Mike and Mitzi strolled in from the kitchen. Little Fuzzy jumped up on the armchair and switched on the viewscreen. Fiddling15 with the selector, he got the Big Blackwater woods-burning. Mike and Mitzi shrieked16 delightedly, like a couple of kids watching a horror show. They knew, by now, that nothing in the screen could get out and hurt them.
“Would you mind if they came out here and saw the Fuzzies?”
“Why, the Fuzzies would love that. They like company.”
Mamma and Baby and Ko-Ko came in, seemed to approve what was on the screen and sat down to watch it. When the bell on the stove rang, they all got up, and Ko-Ko jumped onto the chair and snapped the screen off. Ben Rainsford looked at him for a moment.
“You know, I have married friends with children who have a hell of a time teaching eight-year-olds to turn off screens when they’re through watching them,” he commented.
It took an hour, after dinner, to get the whole story, from the first little yeek in the shower stall, on tape. When he had finished, Ben Rainsford made a few remarks and shut off the recorder, then looked at his watch.
“Twenty hundred; it’ll be seventeen hundred in Mallorysport,” he said. “I could catch Jimenez at Science Center if I called now. He usually works a little late.”
“Go ahead. Want to show him some Fuzzies?” He moved his pistol and some other impedimenta off the table and set Little Fuzzy and Mamma Fuzzy and Baby upon it, then drew up a chair beside it, in range of the communication screen, and sat down with Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko. Rainsford punched out a wavelength17 combination. Then he picked up Baby Fuzzy and set him on his head.
In a moment, the screen flickered18 and cleared, and a young man looked out of it, with the momentary19 upward glance of one who wants to make sure his public face is on straight. It was a bland20, tranquilized, life-adjusted, group-integrated sort of face—the face turned out in thousands of copies every year by the educational production lines on Terra.
“Why, Bennett, this is a pleasant surprise,” he began. “I never expec—” Then he choked; at least, he emitted a sound of surprise. “What in the name of Dai-Butsu are those things on the table in front of you?” he demanded. “I never saw anything—And what is that on your head?”
“Family group of Fuzzies,” Rainsford said. “Mature male, mature female, immature21 male.” He lifted Baby Fuzzy down and put him in Mamma’s arms. “Species Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra. The gentleman on my left is Jack Holloway, the sunstone operator, who is the original discoverer. Jack, Juan Jimenez.”
They shook their own hands at one another in the ancient Terran-Chinese gesture that was used on communication screens, and assured each other—Jimenez rather absently—that it was a pleasure. He couldn’t take his eyes off the Fuzzies.
“Where did they come from?” he wanted to know. “Are you sure they’re indigenous22?”
“They’re not quite up to spaceships, yet, Dr. Jimenez. Fairly early Paleolithic, I’d say.”
Jimenez thought he was joking, and laughed. The sort of a laugh that could be turned on and off, like a light. Rainsford assured him that the Fuzzies were really indigenous.
“We have everything that’s known about them on tape,” he said. “About an hour of it. Can you take sixty-speed?” He was making adjustments on the recorder as he spoke23. “All right, set and we’ll transmit to you. And can you get hold of Gerd van Riebeek? I’d like him to hear it too; it’s as much up his alley24 as anybody’s.”
When Jimenez was ready, Rainsford pressed the play-off button, and for a minute the recorder gave a high, wavering squeak25. The Fuzzies all looked startled. Then it ended.
“I think, when you hear this, that you and Gerd will both want to come out and see these little people. If you can, bring somebody who’s a qualified26 psychologist, somebody capable of evaluating the Fuzzies’ mentation. Jack wasn’t kidding about early Paleolithic. If they’re not sapient27, they only miss it by about one atomic diameter.”
Jimenez looked almost as startled as the Fuzzies had. “You surely don’t mean that?” He looked from Rainsford to Jack Holloway and back. “Well, I’ll call you back, when we’ve both heard the tape. You’re three time zones west of us, aren’t you? Then we’ll try to make it before your midnight—that’ll be twenty-one hundred.”
He called back half an hour short of that. This time, it was from the living room of an apartment instead of an office. There was a portable record player in the foreground and a low table with snacks and drinks, and two other people were with him. One was a man of about Jimenez’s age with a good-humored, non-life-adjusted, non-group-integrated and slightly weather-beaten face. The other was a woman with glossy28 black hair and a Mona Lisa-ish smile. The Fuzzies had gotten sleepy, and had been bribed29 with Extee Three to stay up a little longer. Immediately, they registered interest. This was more fun than the viewscreen.
Jimenez introduced his companions as Gerd van Riebeek and Ruth Ortheris. “Ruth is with Dr. Mallin’s section; she’s been working with the school department and the juvenile30 court. She can probably do as well with your Fuzzies as a regular xeno-psychologist.”
“Well, I have worked with extraterrestrials,” the woman said. “I’ve been on Loki and Thor and Shesha.”
Jack nodded. “Been on the same planets myself. Are you people coming out here?”
“Oh, yes,” van Riebeek said. “We’ll be out by noon tomorrow. We may stay a couple of days, but that won’t put you to any trouble; I have a boat that’s big enough for the three of us to camp on. Now, how do we get to your place?”
“There’s one thing, though, I’m going to have to get firm about. I don’t want to have to speak about it again. These little people are to be treated with consideration, and not as laboratory animals. You will not hurt them, or annoy them, or force them to do anything they don’t want to do.”
“We understand that. We won’t do anything with the Fuzzies without your approval. Is there anything you’d want us to bring out?”
“Yes. A few things for the camp that I’m short of; I’ll pay you for them when you get here. And about three cases of Extee Three. And some toys. Dr. Ortheris, you heard the tape, didn’t you? Well, just think what you’d like to have if you were a Fuzzy, and bring it.”
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
jack
|
|
| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
vein
|
|
| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
gorge
|
|
| n.咽喉，胃，暴食，山峡；v.塞饱，狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
decided
|
|
| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
prawns
|
|
| n.对虾，明虾( prawn的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
liar
|
|
| n.说谎的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
galaxy
|
|
| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
catching
|
|
| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
killing
|
|
| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
zoology
|
|
| n.动物学，生态 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
bumper
|
|
| n.(汽车上的)保险杠；adj.特大的，丰盛的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
sipped
|
|
| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
implements
|
|
| n.工具( implement的名词复数 )；家具；手段；[法律]履行（契约等）v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 )；执行；贯彻；使生效 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
briefly
|
|
| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
fiddling
|
|
| 微小的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
shrieked
|
|
| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
wavelength
|
|
| n.波长 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
flickered
|
|
| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
momentary
|
|
| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
bland
|
|
| adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
immature
|
|
| adj.未成熟的，发育未全的，未充分发展的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
indigenous
|
|
| adj.土产的，土生土长的，本地的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
alley
|
|
| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
squeak
|
|
| n.吱吱声，逃脱；v.（发出）吱吱叫，侥幸通过；（俚）告密 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
qualified
|
|
| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
sapient
|
|
| adj.有见识的，有智慧的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
glossy
|
|
| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
bribed
|
|
| v.贿赂( bribe的过去式和过去分词 )；向（某人）行贿，贿赂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
juvenile
|
|
| n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
coordinates
|
|
| n.相配之衣物；坐标( coordinate的名词复数 )；（颜色协调的）配套服装；[复数]女套服；同等重要的人（或物）v.使协调，使调和( coordinate的第三人称单数 )；协调；协同；成为同等 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
noted
|
|
| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |