"Piper, H Beam - Fuzzy 1 - little Fuzzy1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

"You haven't been having trouble with him again?" she asked
anxiously.

He made a face, and then tasted his drink. "It's trouble just being
around that character. Ruth, to use one of those expressions your
profession deplores, Len Kellogg is just plain nuts!" He drank
some more of his cocktail and helped himself to one of her
cigarettes.

"Here," he continued, after lighting it. "A couple of days ago, he
told me he'd been getting inquiries about this plague of land-
prawns they're having over on Beta. He wanted me to set up a
research project to find out why and what to do about it."

"Well?"

"I did. I made two screen calls, and then I wrote a report and sent it
up to him. That was where I jerked my trigger; I ought to have taken
a couple of weeks and made a real production out of it."

"What did you tell him?"

"The facts. The limiting factor on land-prawn increase is the
weather. The eggs hatch underground and the immature prawns
dig their way out in the spring. If there's been a lot of rain, most of
them drown in their holes or as soon as they emerge. According to
growth rings on trees, last spring was the driest in the Beta
Piedmont in cen turies, so most of them survived, and as they're
parthenogenetic females, they all laid eggs. This spring, it was
even drier, so now theyhave land-prawns all over central Beta. And
I don't know that anything can be done about them."

"Well, did he think you were just guessing?"

He shook his head in exasperation. "I don't know what he thinks.
You're the psychologist, you try to figure it. I sent him that report
yesterday morning. He seemed quite satisfied with it at the time.
Today, just after noon, he sent for me and told me it wouldn't do at
all. Tried to insist that the rainfall on Beta had been normal. That
was silly; I referred him to his meteorologists and climatologists,
where I'd gotten my information. He complained that the news
services were after him for an explanation. I told him I'd given him
the only explanation there was. He said he simply couldn't use it.
There had to be some other explanation."

"If you don't like the facts, you ignore them, and if you need facts,
dream up some you do like," she said. "That's typical rejection of
reality. Not psychotic, not even psychoneurotic. But certainly not
sane." She had finished her first drink and was sipping slowly at her
second. "You know, this is interesting. Does he have some theory