The Science Fiction Anthology. Andre Norton

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СКАЧАТЬ He flexed his arms and stuck out his chest. “OOH!” said the girl, and went bounding back up the side of the pit.

      I stopped the exercise and the wrestlers sat and mused blankly at each other.

      In a few minutes, our little visitor was back again. With her were about a dozen pals, differing in details, but resembling her in the important points.

      The leader was a tall, brown-haired, gray-eyed girl, with a face where intellect fought a losing battle with a dimple. The others helped her down the pit side as if she were something fragile and precious, like maybe a new bottle of perfume.

      Then our pal went back to Gorgeous Gordon. “More ooh!” said the girl guide.

      You know how wrestlers are. They’ll slap each other silly to get the cheers of four kids on a street corner, or commit mayhem for a purse big enough to buy a ham hock. In five seconds, we had going one of the finest wrestling matches in the history of good, clean sportsmanship. And over the cracking of wrestler’s bones rose the shrieks of the girls, showing that their throats were in the right place, even if their brains weren’t.

      The gray-eyed girl sat with me on a flange of unmined ore. She was Aliana, a direct descendant of the leader of the Eros pioneers. As such, she was princess of the planetoid, although she left most of the governing to a council of elders, apparently as outstanding an array of mossbacks as ever smelled a gardenia or just plain smelled.

      “I sometimes think, Mr. Michaels,” Aliana told me, “that we of Eros have laid too much stress upon the cerebral. I wonder if our lives would not be fuller if we also included some of the more vigorous activities, such as the one in which those men are now engaged.”

      “If it’s a vacation for your mind that you want, Princess,” I agreed, “those boys are your meat.”

      Just then the Gorilla Man got a leg split on Barefoot Charley and began to braid his toes.

      “How stimulating,” breathed Aliana. “What is proper for the onlooker to remark in such a situation?”

      “A satisfactory outcry, Princess,” I explained, “is, ‘Break it off!’“

      “Break it off!” encouraged Aliana.

      I had to wind it up, finally, before the wrestlers reduced themselves to blubber, thereby forcing the Interplanetary Amusement Corp. to go out and lasso itself another herd.

      The girls went giggling up the side of the pit. At the top, Aliana waved at me. The others blew kisses, not caring much where they landed, as long as the receiver had muscles.

      Next morning, a young man came into the pit. He announced that, upon Princes Aliana’s orders, we were to have the freedom of Eros, so that contact with the planetoid culture could win us from our uncouth ways.

      He was too young to be wholly gentled by the flowers and the council of elders. So the Choker showed him a wristlock. And when the Choker tossed him on his ear in the erydnium ore, he said words that were not beautiful. Maybe there’s something to the people of this asteroid.

      Anyway, everything is great now. We wander wherever we please, as long as we return to the pit to sleep. When nobody is looking, we sneak into the royal palace courtyard and put on a wrestling show for the girls.

      And the nights! Ah, the nights!

      Don’t turn entirely green with envy, Hankus. At least leave your nose the familiar red.

      Jed

      SPACEGRAM

      To: Jed Michaels, Ryttuk, Eros

      FINE WORK. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. WILL MEET YOU AT MARS. MAYBE YOU CAN PERSUADE SOME OF THE GIRLS TO ACCOMPANY YOU THAT FAR. AM SENDING THE WRESTLERS TO SATURN.

      HANK

      ROCKET MAIL (First Class)

      To: H. E. Horrocks,

      Cosmopolis, Earth

      Dear Hank:

      Go to Mars, the man says. I can’t go anywhere. The elders caught us giving a rassle when Aliana was away and we’re in again.

      These flower roots taste terrible.

      Jed

      SPACEGRAM

      To: Jed Michaels,

      Ryttuk, Eros

      YOU BLUNDERING BABOON, YOU’RE FIRED.

      HORROCKS

      ROCKET MAIL

      (Free, Royal Frank)

      Royal Palace, Eros

      To: H. E. Horrocks,

      Cosmopolis, Earth

      Dear melon brain:

      I gather from your last message that you wish to discharge me. I accept the offer, fat boy. In fact, under royal Eros precedent, which I made up three minutes ago, we will even pay for your message. However, the words “you blundering baboon” do not seem a necessary part of that message, and their cost will be taken out of the first bit of business that the royal house of Eros decides to honor your puny little corporation with.

      If any.

      Times are changed, Hankus. I’m a big shot now.

      A few hours after we got back in the pit, Aliana came back and sneaked down to see us. She said she thought it was about time to end this council of elders’ nonsense and she asked our help.

      I told her plan to the wrestlers in words of one syllable or less. They all agreed except the Faceless Wonder.

      “I don’t see why I should have nothing to do with no book,” he said. It seems he had had a book once and chewed up the first three chapters before he found put it wasn’t something to eat.

      I signaled to the boys. Zbich clamped a headlock on him. The Choker got a hammerlock. The Gorilla Man took him in a scissors. Gorgeous Gordon got a toehold and Barefoot Charley stood by to jump on his stomach.

      “Do you understand now?” I asked politely.

      “Sure, Jed, sure,” said the Faceless Wonder. “Why didn’t ya explain it to me in the first place?”

      So the next morning, we yelled for books. And for the following days, whenever anybody was around, we were busy sniffing flowers and reading. Between times, I tried to explain to the wrestlers why there weren’t more pictures in the books.

      A week later, we sprang the trap. I told the stablehand who brought us our fodder that I had taken in so much culture that I was breathing beauty. Zbich, gagging a little, asked for a second helping of flower roots. Gorgeous Gordon requested a needle and thread; he said he had fallen behind in his needlepoint.

      A report of the conversation got to the council of elders and it brought them to the lip of the pit, looking like something the glue factory had refused СКАЧАТЬ