"Jack Dann - Jumping The Road" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

surprisingly hot, and leathery as the case of an old book. It took a moment
to get used to looking at the aliens and listening to the translator, who was
a young woman with a hard, shiny face and a deep voice.
Two men clutched my elbows as if I were a fugitive and gently propelled
me toward what looked to be a slidewalk the size of a thoroughfare. They
were going to ghost me away before the alien in the tallis could introduce
himself. “Excuse me,” I said to the man on my right (after all, I’m
right-handed), “but what about my friend there?” I waved to the alien in
the yarmulke, who stood alone away from the crowd. He frowned, which
for an Ulimite is the same thing as a smile. (I had had the whole voyage in
the starship to study, so I knew a few things.)
“Shalom,” he said in a voice that carried over the noise of the others.
The intonation was odd: he pronounced the word as if it were divided into
three distinct syllables, and he glottalized the “al” and “om.”
I asked him who he was: “Mee Ahtaw?”
He spoke quickly, as if the group surrounding me would stop him any
second, but it was as if he didn’t exist: his brethren either didn’t notice
him or were purposely ignoring him. Although he used words I had never
heard, I understood most of what he said. His name was Tahlmeade,
which meant student, at least in Terran Hebrew.
A member of the Ulimite delegation stepped right in front of me, even
as I was speaking to Tahlmeade. I thought it very rude, and odd; but
Tahlmeade simply moved around the periphery of the nervous crowd and
re-established eye-contact with me. As he moved about, like a child
playing peekaboo, I could not help but smile. All the Ulimites were
short—about four and a half feet tall—and their flattened features, serious
expressions, and roundish heads made them seem… cute. But even to
think about them that way was condescending. No, more than that. Was it
not just another form of prejudice? Of racism? Indeed, the human
dignitaries might well think that an old man with a long beard and
earlocks was cute, especially one wearing a fur-brimmed hat, and a black
caftan with a silk cord knotted around his waist to separate the Godly
parts?—the mind, the soul, and the heart—from the lower parts.
And who knows what the Ulimites thought of humans? Most likely, they
didn’t perceive us as cute. Perhaps they considered us smelly, sweaty,
brutelike, fleshy as mushrooms, and most likely crazy: meshuggener.
The uniformed young man beside me motioned to Tahlmeade. He was
with the consulate mission and held onto my elbow as if I was on my last
legs and about to fall face-flat on the ground. “Don’t worry, Rabbi, he
knows his way around. He’ll catch up with us later.”
“I should hope he knows his way around, but where are we going?”
“To the consulate. A party has been prepared in your honor.” The young
bureaucrat was quite handsome: dark hair, a good sharp nose that you
could see, a strong chin, and dark eyes that would make women talk.
“Please, let’s bring the alien in the prayer-shawl along with us. It’s
obvious that—”
“I’m afraid that would not do, Rabbi.”
“Would not do?”
The young men pulled me along, and I, of course, did not resist; I just
walked slowly—after all, I’m an old man.