"James Tiptree Jr - The Color of Neanderthal Eyes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

anything approaches. I've searched inland on several atolls, and so far found no sign of any
predators—indeed, of anything larger than a kind of hopping mouse and a wealth of attractive
semi-birds. But I'd prefer not to have even hop-mice investigate me in the night.
I rush the dinghy up a smooth place, jump out, and drag it beyond the tideline. There are low,
frequent tides in this part of Wet, generated by a trio of little moons that sail across the sky three times a
night, revolving around each other. Like everything else here, they are attractive—one is sulfur-yellow,
another rusty pink, the third a blue-white.
The alien offers to help me with the boat. I warn him about punctures and letting the air out. He steps
back, warily.
"Thank you."
When I detach the motor and batteries, he comes to examine them.
"More wonders. How does this work?"
"Later, later." I am puffing with exertion as I take out all my gear and turn the boat over to make a
bed, hopefully out of reach of the little nocturnal crabs and lizards on these beaches. The alien watches
everything closely, nodding to himself. When I have dried the dinghy's bottom and laid out my sleep
shelter, he sits down on the sand alongside.
"Now you will—" Quick images of me relieving myself among the papyrus and returning to sit on the
boat and eat.
I laugh; the pictures are deft cartoons, emphasizing our mutual differences and also the—I
fear—growing plumpness around my belt.
"Yes. And I fill my canteens. The beach last night had no fresh water."
"Good. I, too, will eat." He opens his belt pouch and extracts the crabmeat, together with two neatly
cleaned little reef fish. Raw fish must be a staple here.
When I return, he is still delicately eating. I offer him water but it is refused. "You don't need fresh
water after such a long time in the salt sea?"
"Oh, no." I reflect that their bodies must have solved the problem of osmosis, which dehydrates
seagoing Humans. Perhaps that beautiful pale greenish, velvety-looking skin is in fact some sort of
osmotic organ.
I settle down with my food-bars, enjoying the unmistakable sense of companionship that emanates
from the alien. We are both examining each other between bites, and I find that his smile is contagious; I
am grinning, too. Extraordinary! Especially after my last aliens.
Now I can see more signs of his—or her—aquatic origins. A rudimentary, charmingly tinted dorsal fin
shows at the back of his neck, running down his spine to surface again just above its end. There is a frilly
little fin on the outside of each wrist. All these fishlike trappings fold away neatly when not in use. The
flipper-fins on his feet fold over the toes so as to appear merely decoration. And his hair isn't true hair, I
see, but more like the very thin tendrils of a rosy anemone; a sensory organ, perhaps. Am I seeing a
member of a race that has evolved directly from fishes? I think so; these appendages look more like
evolutionary remnants than new developments to my untrained eye. He is on his way out of, rather than
back to, the sea. But could he be cold-blooded? No; when our bodies had brushed together, I had felt
solid warmth under the thick, cool integument.
But perhaps he is not "on his way" at all; on this world, his adaptations seem perfect. There is every
reason to retain his aquatic features, and none at all to lose them. I think I am seeing a culminant form,
which will not change much, at least from natural pressures.
He for his part is looking me over with care.
"You do not swim well," he concludes, extending one foot and flicking the flippers open.
"No, but we have these." I reach under the dinghy and pull out my swim-fins to show him. He laughs
appreciatively, and I reflect that my race, like seals, is returning to the sea—by prosthesis.
"My world has much dry land," I explain. "My race grew up from land animals who never went to
sea." What am I doing, assuming a grasp of evolution theory on the part of one whose mind may not be
much more than a fish's? Yet he seems to understand.