"Piper, H Beam - Fuzzy 3 - Other People" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

steel blades on twelve-inch steel shafts. They were newcomers,
hadn't had their vocal training yet; he put in the earplug and
switched on the hearing aid he had to use less and less frequently
now, and they were all yelling:
"Pappy Jack! Heyo, Pappy Jack. You make play with us?"

They'd been around long enough to learn that he was Pappy Jack
to every Fuzzy in the place, which as of the noon count stood at
three hundred sixty-two, and they all thought he had nothing to do
but "make play" with them. He squatted down, looking at their ID-
disks; all numbered in the twelve-twenties, which meant they'd
come in day before yesterday.

"Why aren't you kids in school?" he asked, grabbing one who was
trying to work the zipper of his shirt.

"SkoonWhat'w,skooir'

"School," he told them, "is place where Fuzzies learn new things.
Learn to make talk like Big Ones, so Big Ones not need put-in-ear
things. Learn to make things, have fun. Learn not get hurt by Big
One things."

He pointed to a long corrugated metal shed across the run.
"School in that place. Come; I show."

He knew what had happened. This gang had met some .Fuzzy in
the woods who had told them about Hoksu-Mitto, and they'd come
to get in on it. They'd been taken in tow by Little Fuzzy or Ko-Xo or
one of George Lunt's or Gerd and Ruth van Riebeek's Fuzzies,
and brought to ZNPF headquarters to be fingerprinted and given
ID-disks and issued equipment, and then told to go amuse
themselves. He started across the bridge, the Fuzzies running
beside and ahead of him.

The interior of the long shed was cool and shady, but not quiet.
There were about two hundred Fuzzies, all talking at once; when he
switched off his hearing aid, most of it was the yeek-yeeking which
was the audible fringe sound of their ultrasonic voices. Two of
George Lunt's family, named Dillinger and Ned Kelly, were
teaching a class—most of whom had already learned to pitch their
voices to human audibility—how to make bows and arrows.
Considering that they'd only become bowyers and fletchers
themselves a month ago, they were doing very well, and the class
was picking it up quickly and enthusiastically. His own Mike and
Mitzi were giving a class in fire-making, sawing a length of hard
wood back and forth across the grain of a softer log. They had a
score or so of pupils, all whooping excitedly as the wood-dust
began to smoke. Another crowd stood or squatted around a ZNPF
corporal who was using a jackknife to skin a small animal Terrans