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

"Three of 'em sucking it up in there," I said.

"Holy shit, let's go," Mitchell croaks back at me. The girl had fitted him out
with this voicebox thing, made him sound like a frog at the bottom of a rain
barrel.

The girl pats him all over with that fine, rusty dust the Alphas are always
shedding. She straightens the pouches so you can hardly see that his arms are
too short for an Alpha.

"Let's make tracks," Mitchell says, and proceeds to do just that. Alpha tracks,
fat and seven-toed.

We go across the parking lot, so the escorts can't see. In a minute we're in
Nan's. The other Alphas don't take any notice of Mitchell but all the people do.
They move out of the way fast and we parade in, me a little behind so it'll seem
like I was just a tourist. Mitchell's got the Alpha shuffle down just right, to
my eye.

Bold as brass, he sits down. The suits look at each other, dunno what to do. But
they buy it, that Mitchell's one of them.

The Alphas still don't notice him. Bartender asks and Mitchell orders, making a
kind of slithery noise.

He slurps down two drinks before anything happens. An Alpha makes a gesture with
that nose thing of theirs and Mitchell does too. Then there's some more
gesturing and they talk like wet things moving inside a bag.

I sit and listen but I can't make sense out of any of it. Mitchell seems to know
what he's doing. He keeps it up for maybe five more minutes. I can see it's
wearing on him. He gives me the signal.

I clear some space for him so he can get back up -- that crap he was wearing
weighs real considerable. He gets up smooth and shuffles some and then we're out
the door. Free and clean. We got back to the shack before we let go with the
whooping and hollering.

We pull it off four more times in the next three weeks. Each time the Alphas
take more notice of Mitchell. Hard to know what they think of him. The gift
comes over from New Orleans and does him up, getting better each time. I keep an
ear open for word on the street and it's all good.

Or seems so to me, anyway. Everybody thinks Mitchell's the real thing. Course
that's people talking, not Alphas. After the fourth time I couldn't hold back
any more. "You got some money angle on this, right?"

"Money?"