"Resnick, Mike - The Elephants on Neptune" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

elephant fighting, which was exactly like cock-fighting, only on a
larger scale. Much larger. It became a wildly popular sport for
thirty or forty years until they ran out of participants.
"Not only did we worship you," continued the men, "but we actually
named a country after you-the Ivory Coast. That should prove our
good intentions."
"You didn't name it after us," said the elephants. "You named it
after the parts of our bodies that you kept killing us for."
"You're being too critical," said the men. "We could have named it
after some local politician with no vowels in his name."
"Speaking of the Ivory Coast," said the elephants, "did you know
that the first alien visitors to Earth landed there in 1883?"
"What did they look like?"
"They had ivory exoskeletons," answered the elephants. "They took
one look at the carnage and left."
"Are you sure you're not making this all up?" asked the men.
"Why would we lie to you at this late date?"
"Maybe it's your nature," suggested the men.
"Oh, no," said the elephants. "Our nature is that we always tell the
truth. Our tragedy is that we always remember it."
The men decided that it was time to break for dinner, answer calls
of nature, and check in with Mission Control to report what they'd
found. They all walked back to the ship, except for one man, who
lingered behind.
All of the elephants left too, except for one lone bull. "I intuit
that you have a question to ask," he said.
"Yes," replied the man. "You have such an acute sense of smell, how
did anyone ever sneak up on you during the hunt?"
"The greatest elephant hunters were the Wanderobo of Kenya and
Uganda. They would rub our dung all over their bodies to hide their
own scent, and would then silently approach us."
"Ah," said the man, nodding his head. "It makes sense."
"Perhaps," conceded the elephant. Then he added, with all the
dignity he could muster, "But if the tables were turned, I would
sooner die than cover myself with your shit."
He turned away and set off to rejoin his comrades.
Neptune is unique among all the worlds in the galaxy. It alone
recognizes the truism that change is inevitable, and acts upon it in
ways that seem very little removed from magic.
For reasons the elephants couldn't fathom or explain, Neptune
encourages metamorphosis. Not merely adaptation, although no one
could deny that they adapted to the atmosphere and the climate and
the fluctuating surface of the planet and the lack of acacia
trees-but metamorphosis. The elephants understood at a gut level
that Neptune had somehow imparted to them the ability to evolve at
will, though they had been careful never to abuse this gift.
And since they were elephants, and hence incapable of carrying a
grudge, they thought it was a pity that the men couldn't evolve to
the point where they could leave their bulky spacesuits and awkward
helmets behind, and walk free and unencumbered across this most