"Murray Leinster - Keyhole (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

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Keyhole


There’s a story about a psychologist who was studying the intelligence of a chimpanzee. He
led the chimp into a room full of toys, went out, closed the door and put his eye to the keyhole
to see what the chimp was doing. He found himself gazing into a glittering interested brown eye
only inches from his own. The chimp was looking through the keyhole to see what the psychologist
was doing.

When they brought Butch into the station in Tycho Crater he seemed to shrivel as the
gravity coils in the air lock went on. He was impossible to begin with. He was all big eyes and
skinny arms and legs, and he was very young and he didn’t need air to breathe. Worden saw him as a
limp bundle of bristly fur and terrified eyes as his captors handed him over.
“Are you crazy?” demanded Worden angrily. “Bringing him in like this? Would you take a
human baby into eight gravities? Get out of the way!”
He rushed for the nursery that had been made ready for somebody like Butch. There was a
rebuilt dwelling cave on one side. The other side was a human school room. And under the nursery
the gravity coils had been turned off so that in that room things had only the weight that was
proper to them on the Moon.
The rest of the station had coils to bring everything up to normal weight for Earth.
Otherwise the staff of the station would be seasick most of the time. Butch was in the Earth-
gravity part of the station when he was delivered, and he couldn’t lift a furry spindly paw.
In the nursery, though, it was different. Worden put him on the floor. Worden was the
uncomfortable one there—his weight only twenty pounds instead of a normal hundred and sixty. He
swayed and reeled as a man does on the Moon without gravity coils to steady him.
But that was the normal thing to Butch. He uncurled himself and suddenly flashed across
the nursery to the reconstructed dwelling-cave. It was a pretty good job, that cave. There were
the five-foot chipped rocks shaped like dunce caps, found in all residences of Butch’s race. There
was the rocking stone on its base of other flattened rocks. But the spear stones were fastened
down with wire in case Butch got ideas.
Butch streaked it to these familiar objects. He swarmed up one of the dunce-cap stones and
locked his arms and legs about its top, clinging close. Then he was still. Worden regarded him.
Butch was motionless for minutes, seeming to take in as much as possible of his surroundings
without moving even his eyes.
Suddenly his head moved. He took in more of his environment. Then he stirred a third time
and seemed to look at Worden with an extraordinary intensity— whether of fear or pleading Worden
could not tell.
“Hmm,” said Worden, “so that’s what those stones are for! Perches or beds or roosts, eh?
I’m your nurse, fella. We’re playing a dirty trick on you but we can’t help it.”
He knew Butch couldn’t understand, but he talked to him as a man does talk to a dog or a
baby. It isn’t sensible, but it’s necessary.
“We’re going to raise you up to be a traitor to your kinfolk,” he said with some grimness.
“I don’t like it, but it has to be done. So I’m going to be very kind to you as part of the
conspiracy. Real kindness would suggest that I kill you instead—but I can’t do that.”
Butch stared at him, unblinking and motionless. He looked something like an Earth monkey
but not too much so. He was completely impossible but he looked pathetic.
Worden said bitterly, “You’re in your nursery, Butch. Make yourself at home!”
He went out and closed the door behind him. Outside he glanced at the video screens that