"Piper, H Beam - Fuzzy 2 - Other Human Race2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

all. Forty years ago, he'd left Terra to get the seat of his pants off
the seat of a chair like that, and here he was in the evening of life-
well, late afternoon, call it around second cocktail time-trapped in
one.

It wasn't just this room, either. Through the open door he could
hear what was happening outside. The thud of axes, and the howl
of chain-saws; he was going to miss all those big featherleaf trees
from around the house. The machine-gun banging of power-
hammers, the clanking and grunting of bulldozers. A sudden
warning cry, followed by a falling crash and a multivoiced burst of
blasphemy. He hoped none of the Fuzzies had been close enough
to whatever had happened to get hurt.

Something tugged gently at his trouser-leg, and a small voice said,
"Yeek?" His hands went to his throat, snapping on the ultrasonic
hearing-aid and inserting the earplug. Immediately, he began to
hear a number of small sounds that had been previously inaudible,
and the voice was saying, "Pappy Jack?"

He looked down at the Zarathustran native whose affairs he had
been commissioned to administer. He was an erect biped, two feet
tall, with a wide-eyed humanoid face, his body covered with soft
golden fur. He wore a green canvas pouch lettered TFMC, and a
two-inch silver disc on a chain about his neck, and nothing else.
The disc was lettered LITTLE FUZZY, and Jack Holloway, Cold
Creek Valley, Beta Continent, and the numeral I. He was the first
Zarathus­tran aborigine he or any other Terran human had ever
seen.

He reached down and stroked his small friend's head.

"Hello, Little Fuzzy. You want to visit with Pappy Jack for a while?"

Little Fuzzy pointed to the open door. Five other Fuzzies were
peeping bashfully into the room, making comments among
them­selves.

"Fuzzee no shu do-bizzo do-mitto zat-hakko," Little Fuzzy
in­formed him. "Heeva so si do-mitto."

Some Fuzzies who hadn't been here before had just come; they
wanted to stay. At least, that was what he thought Little Fuzzy was
saying; it had only been ten days since he had known that Fuzzies
could talk at all. He pressed a button to start the audiovisual
re­corder; it was adjusted to transform their ultrasonic voices to
audible frequencies.

"Make talk." He picked his way through his hundred-word Fuzzy
vocabulary. "Pappy Jack friend. Not hurt, be good to them. Give