"George R. R. Martin - The Sandkings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

The oranges made their appearance on the eighth day. By then the other sandkings had` begun
carrying small stones and erecting crude fortifications. They still did not war. At the G moment
they were only half the size of those he had seen at Wo and Shade's, but Kress thought they were
growing rapidly.

The castles began to rise midway through the second week. Organized battalions of mobiles dragged
heavy chunks of sandstone and granite back to their corners, where other mobiles were pushing sand
into place with mandibles and tendrils. Kress had purchased a pair of magnifying goggles so that
he could watch them work wherever they might go in the tank. He wandered around and around the
tall plastic walls, observing. It was fascinating.

3
The castles were a bit plainer than Kress would have liked, but he had an idea about that. The
next day he cycled through some obsidian and flakes of colored glass along with the food. Within
hours they had been incorporated into the castle walls.

The black castle was the first completed, followed by the white and red fortresses. The oranges
were last, as usual. Kress took his meals into the living room and ate, seated on the couch so he
could watch. He expected the first war to break out any hour now.

He was disappointed. Days passed, the castles grew taller and more grand, and Kress seldom left
the tank except to attend to his sanitary needs and to answer critical business calls. But the
sandkings did not war. He was getting upset.

Finally he stopped feeding them.

Two days after the table scraps had ceased to fall from their desert sky, four black mobiles
surrounded an orange and dragged it back to their maw. They maimed it first, ripping off its
mandibles and antennae and limbs, and carried it through the shadowed main gate of their miniature
castle. It never emerged. Within an hour more than forty orange mobile marched across the sand and
attacked the blacks' corner. They were outnumbered by the blacks that came rushing up from the
depths. When the fighting was over, the attackers had been slaughtered. The dead and dying were
taken down to feed the black maw.

Kress, delighted, congratulated himself on his genius.

When he put food into the tank the following day, a three-cornered battle broke out over its
possession. The whites were the big winners.

After that, war followed war.



file:///F|/rah/George%20R.%20R.%20Martin/Martin,%20George%20R.%20R.%20-%20Sandkings.txt (5 of 25) [1/17/03 7:16:28 PM]
 file:///F|/rah/George%20R.%20R.%20Martin/Martin,%20George%20R.%20R.%20-%20Sandkings.txt

Almost a month to the day after Jala Wo had delivered the sandkings, Kress turned on the
holographic projector, and his face materialized in the tank. It turned, slowly, around and
around, so that his gaze fell on all four castles equally. Kress thought it rather a good