"Jerry Oltion - A New Generation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oltion Jerry)

“Watch me.” The creature lowered its shiny paw to its waist, left the
shiny part in a pouch there, and lifted a different shiny thing—a weapon, by
the sense of confidence that emanated from the creature when it grasped
it.

The weapon looked like nothing instinct had prepared her for, either.
This was too strange. She turned to flee, but her legs had hardly begun to
move when they lost their strength. Her tail twitched for balance, tearing the
bush beside her out of the ground, but then she lost control of it, too, and
fell to the sand.

“Got it in one,” said the creature happily.

It tromped up to her on its long legs and in one smooth motion
grabbed her tail and lifted her off the ground, her head lolling from her
numb body. She tried to snap at its knees, but she could barely open her
mouth.

Instinct offered no script to follow now, either. If any of her ancestors
had been caught in this fashion, they hadn’t survived to breed and pass
their knowledge on.

So she would be eaten. Not immediately, though. The creature was
taking her back to its silver egg. Apparently this was the mother, rather than
a hatchling, and it meant to feed its young. It must be like the small
leaf-eaters in the forest above, whose species survived by out-breeding
their predators.

But this creature was a predator itself. That would be a dangerous
combination. Ancestral memory reminded her how that had turned out when
her own species tried it. This creature’s kind would have to be winnowed
ruthlessly or the rest of her world would suffer for generations until evolution
restored the balance.

She had to escape. Escape and climb the cliff and cross through the
forest to the highlands where the adults lived, long before breeding time
made it safe. She would have to negotiate a truce, probably between many
of her kind, and lead them back here to kill this new creature before it
spread too far to be stopped.

But first she had to regain control of her body. She twitched her tail
and stretched her legs out as far as she could, trying to break through the
weakness the creature’s weapon had induced in her, but her muscles
moved so slowly she wouldn’t have been able to walk, much less run, even
if she managed to break the creature’s grasp.

They reached the opening in the egg. She expected to die in the next
instant, but instead of throwing her in for the babies, the creature reached
inside and withdrew a bag, which it dropped her into and drew closed at the
top.