"Mike Resnick & David Gerrold - Jellyfish" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

Frelching.

Frelching is a combination of multiple art forms. The Jellyfish paint
themselves with light and color and patterns that match and complement
the rip-pling movements of their veils. At the same time, they sing; they play
themselves as magnificent instruments, vibrating the atmosphere around
them in intricate harmonies. Moving singly or in groups, they describe
complex patterns in time and space, that describe vast emotional
landscapes.

Actually, what they are exploring is hypersexual combinations.

Gender is irrelevant to these combinations. The Tryllifandillorians
have invented over a hundred and thirteen different genders and they
expect to invent several hundred more before this cycle of frelching
completes.

A frelch can last ten or twenty centuries. Or longer. The
Tryllifandillorians are as slow and patient as glaciers, and they will continue
until they have exhausted all the possibilities of each specific frelch. Then,
they will re-invent themselves so as to make new variations and
combinations possible. A typical cycle of a hundred and twenty frelches
can last as long as three hundred thousand years.

At this moment in not-time, the Tryllifandillori-ans have made their way
halfway through a cycle of ninety-seven complementary frelches. Because
every frelch includes, recaps, deconstructs, and comments on all of the
previous cycles before expanding into new explorations, each successive
frelch is longer than its predecessor. In this way, the Jellyfish People of
Tryllifandillor pass on their heritage to the survivors of each new seeding.

To the Tryllifandillorians, frelching is an exquis-itely sensual
experience. At its peak, the frelchers will intertwine their tendrils. Adult
Jellyfish are likely to have tendrils several thousand kilometers in length.
The physical intertwining is so intense that it transcends all concept of
sexuality.

Filk stopped typing there. He had reached the bottom of his fourth
page and he had typed exact-ly eight hundred and eighty-five words. There
was room for one more line. So he typed,
 Hi-ho!

And he was done for the day.

He rolled the page out of the typewriter, put it face down on the stack
of finished pages, and sat back in his chair.

So it goes.

See?