"Benford-DoingAlien" - читать интересную книгу автора (Benford Gregory)

done up in this tricky filter rig he made himself out of tin sheeting.

That's how he was with this makeup girl, too. She layered on ridges of swarthy
gum all down his arms, then shaped it with little whittling tools. She was
sweating in that firebox shack. Mitchell was too under all the makeup.

I'm wondering what the hell, and Mitchell says, "Go take a squint, see if
they're in Nan's yet."

So I'm catching on. Mitchell's always had something working on the side, see,
but he takes his time about letting on. Kind of subtle, too. When Mr. Tang moved
into Fairhope with his factory, Mitchell was real respectful and polite and
called him Poon for a year before that Tang caught on.

As I go out the shack and down the alley I see why he used that place. I angle
across Simpson's parking lot and down by those big air conditioners and pop out
on Ivy right next to Nan's. That way, none of the suits can see you coming. Slip
in the side door and sure as God's got a beard, there's three Alphas. Got a
crowd around them but the room is dead quiet. People just looking and wondering
and the aliens drinking.

I'd heard that plenty of fastlane operators were trying to get information out
of Alphas, seeing as they got all this technology. We didn't even see them
coming, that's how good their stuff is.

First thing anybody knew, they were bellying up to Venus, this other planet out
there. Covered in clouds, it was. Then the Alphas start to work on her. First
thing you know, you can see those volcanoes and valleys.

Anybody who can clear up muggy air like that inside a week, you got to pay
attention. Turned out that was just cleaning off the work bench. Next they spun
a kind of magnetic rod, rammed it in at the pole, clean down into the core of
the whole damn planet. Easy as sticking an ice pick through an apple. Only the
ice pick was hollow and they sucked the liquid metal out of there. Up the rod
like it was a straw, and out into space. To make those metal city kind of
things, huge and all.

That's when people started getting really afraid. And some others got really
interested. The way they figured, any little scrappy thing you got from an Alpha
might just be a billion-buck trick.

That's the scoop I heard on CNN coming down from Birmingham, anyway. Now here
was the whole circus in Fairhope, big as life and twice as ugly. Snoops with
those directional microphones. Cameras in the backs of vans, shooting out
through dark windows. Guys in three-piece suits kind of casual slouched against
the bar and trying to get an Alpha to notice them.

So back I go. Mitchell is getting some inflated bags stuck on him by the makeup
girl. Bags all over his back and chest and neck even. He's all the Alpha colors
now, from Georgia clay red here to sky blue there.