"William Tenn - The Liberation of Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

And yet all this time, the human captives inside the artificially darkened space-ships (the Troxxt,
having no eyes, not only had little use for light, but the more sed-entary individuals among them actually
found such radiation disagreeable to their sensitive, unpigmented skins) were not being tortured for
information—nor vivi-sected in the earnest quest of knowledge on a slightly higher level—but educated.
Educated in the Troxxtian language, that is.
True it was that a large number found themselves utterly inadequate for the task which the Troxxt
had set them, and temporarily became servants to the more suc-cessful students. And another, albeit
smaller, group developed various forms of frus-tration hysteria—ranging from mild unhappiness to
complete catatonic depres-sion—over the difficulties presented by a language whose every verb was
irregular, and whose myriads of prepositions were formed by noun-adjective combinations derived from
the subject of the previous sentence. But, eventually, eleven human beings were released, to blink madly
in the sunlight as certified interpreters of Troxxt.
These liberators, it seemed, had never visited Bengal in the heyday of its millen-nia-past civilization.
Yes, these liberators. For the Troxxt had landed on the sixth day of the ancient, al-most mythical
month of October. And October the Sixth is, of course, the Holy Day of the Second Liberation. Let us
remember, let us revere. (If only we could figure out which day it is in our calendar!)


The tale the interpreters told caused men to hang their heads in shame and gnash their teeth at the
deception they had allowed the Dendi to practice upon them.
True, the Dendi had been commissioned by the Galactic Federation to hunt the Troxxt down and
destroy them. This was largely because the Dendi were the Galactic Federation. One of the first
intelligent arrivals on the interstellar scene, the huge crea-tures had organized a vast police force to
protect them and their power against any contingency of revolt that might arise in the future. This police
force was ostensibly a congress of all thinking life forms throughout the galaxy; actually, it was an efficient
means of keeping them under rigid control.
Most species thus-far discovered were docile and tractable, however; the Dendi had been ruling
from time immemorial, said they—very well, then, let the Dendi continue to rule. Did it make that much
difference?
But, throughout the centuries, opposition to the Dendi grew—and the nuclei of the opposition were
the protoplasm-based creatures. What, in fact, had come to be known as the Protoplasmic League.
Though small in number, the creatures whose life cycles were derived from the chemical and
physical properties of protoplasm varied greatly in size, structure, and specialization. A galactic
community deriving the main wells of its power from them would be a dynamic instead of a static place,
where extragalactic travel would be encouraged, instead of being inhibited, as it was at present because
of Dendi fears of meeting a superior civilization. It would be a true democracy of species—a real
bio-logical republic—where all creatures of adequate intelligence and cultural develop-ment would enjoy
a control of their destinies at present experienced by the silicon-based Dendi alone.
To this end, the Troxxt—the only important race which had steadfastly refused the complete
surrender of armaments demanded of all members of the Federation—had been implored by a minor
member of the Protoplasmic League to rescue it from the devastation which the Dendi intended to visit
upon it, as punishment for an unlawful exploratory excursion outside the boundaries of the galaxy.
Faced with the determination of the Troxxt to defend their cousins in organic chemistry, and the
suddenly aroused hostility of at least two-thirds of the interstellar peoples, the Dendi had summoned a
rump meeting of the Galactic Council; declared a state of revolt in being; and proceeded to cement their
disintegrating rule with the blasted life-forces of a hundred worlds. The Troxxt, hopelessly outnumbered
and out-equipped, had been able to continue the struggle only because of the great inge-nuity and
selflessness of other members of the Protoplasmic League, who had risked extinction to supply them with
newly developed secret weapons.
Hadn't we guessed the nature of the beast from the enormous precautions it had taken to prevent the