“And how did you manage to teach him to do that trick?” I was truly astonished.
“I didn’t teach him to do anything. He knows how to do it all on his own.”
Shusher crossed his upper pair of paws on his chest in embarrassment.
There was a strained moment of silence.
“Oh well…” I finally started to say.
“Pardon me.” A high pitched, husky voice broke the silence. It was Shusher speaking. “But I really did teach myself. It wasn’t very difficult.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“It wasn’t at all difficult.” Shusher repeated. “You showed me how to work it yourself when you showed Alice the tale of the Mantis king the day before yesterday.”
“No, that doesn’t matter. How did you learn to speak?”
“I showed him how.” Alice said.
“But I don’t understand it at all! Dozens of biologists are working with the shushers and not once has a single shusher said a word to any of us!”
“But our shusher can read too, can’t you?”
“Somewhat.”
“He’s told me a lot of interesting things…”
“I’ve become great friends with your daughter.”
“But why were you silent for so long?”
“He’s timid.” Alice answered for him.
Shusher blinked his eyes.
A Parition of the Night
We spend our summers in Vnukovo. It’s very convenient; the monorail station is five minutes walk from the old country house. In the forest on the other side of the road grow different kinds of edible mushrooms, the brown caps that grow beneath the birches and the orange caps that grow near the pines, but they are far outnumbered by the mushroom hunters.
I arrived at the country house straight from the Zoo and instead of settling in to a rest found myself up to my ears in the local goings on. It centered around a local boy, Colin, who had become notorious in the Vnukovo area for seizing other children’s toys. His parents had gone so far as to summon a psychologist from Vladivostok, who had in turn written his dissertation on the lad. The psychologist studied Colin, and Colin ate pot stickers and whimpered all day long. I had brought the kid a model photon rocket just to shut him up.