Damon Knight - The Last Word

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2024-11-24 0 0 62.2KB 5 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

THE LAST WORD

Damon Knight

The first word, I like to think, was “Ouch.” Some cave man, trying to knock a stone into better shape

with another stone, slipped, hit his thumb – and there you are. Language.

I have an affection for these useless and unverifiable facts. Take the first dog. He, I feel sure, was an

unusually clever but cowardly wolf, who managed to terrorise early man into throwing him a scrap. Early

man himself was a terrible coward. Man and wolf discovered that they could hunt together, in their

cowardly fashion, and there you are again. ‘Domesticated animals.’

I admit that I was lax during the first few thousand years. By the time I realised that Man needed closer

supervision, many of the crucial events had already taken place. I was then a young – well, let us say a

young fallen angel. Had I been older and more experienced, history would have turned out very

differently.

There was that time when I happened across a young Egyptian and his wife sitting on a stone near the

bank of theNile. They looked glum; the water was rising. A hungry jackal was not far away, and it

crossed my mind that if I distracted the young people’s attention for a few minutes, the jackal might

surprise them.

“High enough for you?”I asked agreeably, pointing to the water.

They looked at me rather sharply. I had put on the appearance of a human being, as nearly as possible,

but the illusion was no good without a large cloak, which was odd for the time of year.

The man said, “If it never got any higher, it would suit me.”

“Why, I’m surprised to hear you say that,” I replied. “If the river didn’t rise, your fields wouldn’t be so

fertile – isn’t that right?”

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Damon Knight - The Last Word

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