[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Soliloquies. The entire artistic history of the Quozl.
The scout s ears dipped. I don t understand.
I wouldn t expect you to. High-red-Chanter s mouth twitched to reveal a couple of teeth. Looks felt
his blood rush. The ancien~t challenge was almost enough to make him charge. Almost. Only training,
experience, and great self-control kept him safely within his own Sama.
You are not an artist, High continued. Merely another cog in a ma-chine.
We are all cogs in the colony. If it survives, that is more important than anything else. You are troubled
by false indivduality. You need help.
Ears bobbed negatively. Not we. As artists we can no longer abide by the foolish, arbitrary rules and
restrictions that force us to dig in the ground like bugs.
The Quozl have always lived underground, Looks-at-Charts pointed out. There is no shame in living
as our ancestors did.
Not if that is the only choice, but it is not.
Looks tried another tack. The decisions of the Council are not arbitrary.
They are whenever art is concerned. Since they chose to conspire to deny us choice, we must make
one for ourselves.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
You re crazy, the two of you.
We re artists, the two of us. High-red-Chanter said it as if it explained everything. In a way it did.
Looks-at-Chart s conscience required him to say one more thing. You have no official permission to be
out here, do you?
We have aesthetic permission, historical precedence. The female spoke for the first time. It is there in
the Second Book for any to see. We have spiritual permission. Those are the only permissions we need.
That s not for me to decide. You realize I must note your presence here in my official report.
We would not expect otherwise from you. High managed to turn com-pliment to insult by way of
inflection. Report whatever you wish. It will not matter.
It will when you return to the Burrow.
Who spoke of returning to the Burrow? Obviously relishing the scout s confusion, the musician
continued. We aren t going back. We re going to start our own Burrow. A place of free choices. Out
here life is not predeter-mined as it was onSequencer. Extending both arms and all fourteen fingers, he
pivoted slowly and addressed the sky. A world is not underspace!
Honest aesthetic sentiments I m sure, Looks replied carefully. This was worse than he thought, much
worse. He couldn t leave now. But if you don t return you risk exposing yourselves to the natives,
thereby putting the entire colony at risk.
We risk nothing of the sort. The musician halted and lowered his arms.
We will live as well concealed as any colony. We know our responsibilities as well as our limitations.
We have with us an ample supply of suppressants which we have been hoarding since we
oversubscribed more than a year ago. Nothing will be put at risk.
For the first time Looks-at-Charts noticed the pair of handmade, cleanly fashioned shoulder packs lying
off to one side beneath a protective overhang-ing rock. He sighed, locked eyes with the unrepentant
High.
All this is nonsense. No one breaks from this Burrow. No one defies Landing Command.
Four years we have lived on this world, argued High-red-Chanter, and not a single native has been
sighted in the vicinity of the Burrow. The colony remains safe no matter the wanderings of two inspired
Quozl. We will not be seen. Two are less conspicuous than thousands even if they happen to be living on
the surface.
It may happen that we will eventually become bored with our self-im-posed isolation and will voluntarily
return to the colony, but right now we burn for freedom. We need the stimulation new sights, new smells,
new sounds can provide. Recordings are not enough. If we do not obtain these things we will perish
creatively.
There are many other artists in the colony. All content themselves with their surroundings.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]