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

Three thunder-noises, one less loud than the others.

Three bright-things, one smaller than the others. And two kinds of
bright-things, and two sets of big footprints. That might mean
something. He would think about it. They found tracks all around
where the heavy thing had been, and also to and from the edge of
the cliff, but none going away in any direction.

"Maybe fly," Stabber said. "Like bird, like gotza."

"And carry great heavy thing?" Big She asked incredulously.

"How else?" Stabber insisted. "Come here, go away.

Not make tracks on ground, then fly in air."

There was a gotza circling far away; Wise One pointed to it. Soon
there would be many gotza, come to feed on the three that had
been killed. Gotza ate their own dead; that was another reason why
People loathed gotza. Better leave now. Soon the gotza would be
close enough to see them. He could hear its wing-sounds very
faintly.

Wing-sounds! That was what they had heard at the spring; the
shrill, wavering sound had been the wingsound of the flying Big
Ones.-.

"Yes," he said. "They flew. We heard them."

He looked again at the bright-thing in his hand, comparing it with the
other two. Little She was saying:
"Bright-things pretty. We keep?"

"Yes," he told her. "We keep."

Then Wise One looked at the markings on the closed end of the
one in his hand. All sorts of things had markings—fruit and stones,
and the wings of insects, and the shells of zatku. It was fun to find
something with odd markings, and then talk about what they looked
like.

But nobody ever found anything that was marked:
He didn't wonder what the markings meant.

Markings never meant anything. They just happened. iti.

Jack Holloway signed the paper—authorization for promotion of
trooper Felix Krajewski, Zarathustra Native Protection Force, to
rank of corporal—and tossed it into the OUT tray. A small breeze,