Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

It were nearly dark when we getted there. But between the rapid-stop and the commune was two trees, with the stuffed-up birdies singing “Hot Sunshine.” They was also some Real Food League propers, saying how our reflexes was getting rotten, but we doedn’t give them no juice.

We gived our tickets to the commune-daddy, what said we should go have supper. The communiteria were the biggest I never seed, with lots of strange folks chittering and laughing and hystering, happily. There were turkey-a for supper, what are my yumyum favorite. And after there were some bingo and singing, and then the daddy telled us all it were bed-time, what maked my hyster to think of.

So we goed looking for our privroom. The first time I never been in one! We gotted to climb a bunch of stairs and go down a couple of halls, and keeped getting losed, but finally we finded it.

The room were little, but jolly-fine. It haved only two bunk-beds, instead of four, like my oldy room. And it haved a chair to sit on, and a pitcher of water-a and two cups. And it were right near the pissy. It doedn’t have no window, but I doedn’t care, cause I just wanted to look at my Jonsy.

Then we was both feeling a little buzzery and shy, and standed there, chittering and hystering a little. And finally, Jonsy said we should turn our backs and put our night tunics on. So we doed that, but it maked us hyster a whole lot, cause I never seed no tommy in his night tunic, and he never seed no queeny in one, neither.

Then he taked my hand, and we both sitted down on the lower bunk together. And he started to kiss me and hug me, and pat my back and my curlies and all kinds of other places, and I were kissing him and petting him, too, and it were just like a movie-prog.

Then he said, “I loves you, Silvy.”

And I said, “I loves you super-much, and I feels headhi about us being married.”

And he said, “I feels headhi, too. Just like a movie-prog.”

And I said, “Me, too.”

And he said, “Tomarrio, before we has to go back, we can take a walky, and we’ll see the trees, and the waterfall, and the mountain, and we’ll singalong with the birdies, and then we’ll go back to our own family commune and be together, just like now, doing whatever we want.”

And I said, “That’s the most sugarsweet thing in the world.”

And then the speaker in the wall said, “It’s lights out, go to your own bunk. No more chittering. It’s lights out. Go to your own bunk. No more chittering,” and so on.

So then he said, “Well, we both haved a longy day, and better go dozy.” So he climbed into the upper bunk. And I curled up, under the blanket of the lower bunk, what were super-comfy.

And he whispered, “Good night, lovey Silvy.”

And I whispered back, “Good night, lovey Jonsy.”

And then we both hystered to think we was chittering after lights-out, and was getting to sleep in the same room, together, like real married folks.

Then I heard him breathing and snory, like, cause he were dozing, and even though I were headhi and buzzery, I started to feel dozy also. And super-glad, cause I were the luckiest queeny I knowed, and a real married folk, with the best tommy in the world, and tomarrio I could hear the stuffed-up birdies sing.

THEY CAME to those Kurdish highlands by ways that surely were not the best in the world. They came with a touch of furtiveness. It was almost as if they wished to come invisibly. It had been that way the other times also, with the other groups.

There were seven creatures in most of the groups coming, and there were seven in this group: two from the Indies, two from Greater Africa, two from Smaller Africa (sometimes called Europe), one from Little Asia. There was no rule about this, but there was always variety in the groups.

“I never believed that the last one was truly valid,” said Joe Sunrise. He was the one from Little Asia: he was big and brindled. “Yes, I still regard the last one as an interloper. Oh, he did show greater power than ourselves. He set us back into a certain place, and since that time we don’t talk very much or very well. We don’t do any of the things as well as we did before. I suppose he is master of us, for a little while, and in a skimpy way. I believe, though, that that ‘little while’ is finished today. I believe that he will be shown as no more than a sad aberration of ourselves, as a step backwards or at least sideways.

“But it will be a true stage of the sequence today, as it was in our own primary day, as it was when we named the world and all its fauna, when we set it into its hierarchy.”

“It comes to me from the old grapevine,” said Mary Rainwood, the blondish or reddish female from the Indies, “that the Day of the Whales was a big one. For showiness it topped even our own takeover. The account of it is carved in rocks in whale talk, in rocks that are over a mile deep under a distant ocean: It is an account that no more than seven whales can still read. But there are several giant squids who can read it also, and squids are notoriously loose-mouthed. Things like that are told around.

“There are others that stand out in the old memories, though they may not have happened quite as remembered. And then there were the less memorable ones: the Day of the Hyenas, for instance; or that of the present ruler (so like and yet so unlike ourselves) whose term is ending now. I for one am glad to see this one end.”

“There is an air of elegance about the New One,” said Kingman Savanna, the male delegate from Greater Africa. “He also is said, in a different sense from the one who now topples from the summit, to be both very like and very unlike ourselves. The New One hasn’t been seen yet, but one of real elegance will be foreknown. Ah, but we also were elegant in our short time! So, I am told, were the Elephants. There was also something special about the Day of the Dolphins. But about this passing interloper there has not been much special.”

“What if this new event and coming blocks us out still more?” Linger Quick-One asked in worry. “What if it leaves us with still less speech and art? What can we do about our own diminishment?”

“We can grin a little,” Joe Sunrise said with a certain defiance. “We can gnash our teeth. We can console ourselves with the thought that he will be diminished still more.”

“He? Who?” Kingman asked.

“The Interloper: he under whom we have lived for this latter twisted and foreshortened era. The Days of the Interlopers are always short-lived, and when their day is finished they tend to lose their distinction and to merge with the lords of the day before.”

“They with us? Ugh!” Mary Rainwood voiced it

There were seven persons or creatures going in this band, and Joe Sunrise of Little Asia seemed to be the accepted leader. They walked slowly but steadily, seeming to be in some pain, as if they were not used to wearing shoes or robes. But they were well shod and well wrapped; they were wrapped entirely in white or gray robes such as the desert people wore, such as fewer of the highland people wore. They were hooded, they were girt, they bore packs and bundles. They were as if handless within their great gray gloves; they were almost faceless within their hoods and wrappings.

But two things could not be hidden if one peered closely at them: the large, brown, alert, observing eyes (these eyes had been passively observing now for ten thousand generations); and their total hairiness wherever the least bit of face or form gave itself away.