"Nick DiChario - Flyby Aliens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dichario Nicholas A)
The alien ships looked like monstrous accidental experiments in pottery, all different shapes, sizes, and colors. There were hundreds of them, possibly thousands in the skies around the globe, more appearing every few minutes. The anchorwoman said that none of the ships had made any "aggressive overtures" toward strategic land targets or United Nations reconnaissance aircraft. Her lips twitched, and there was a slight tremor in her voice.
"My God," Max mumbled. "I think she's serious." He snatched the remote and changed the station to see if anyone else was covering the story. CNN. MSNBC. National NewsNet. All the major networks and their local affiliates were talking about it.
Sally curled up under the bedcovers. "I'm serious, too."
"I don't think this is the best time to discuss splitting up. Look at those aliens out there, I mean, Sal, they're in our atmosphere, right over our heads. This could be the end of the world as we know it. The end of mankind. What if we only have a few hours to live?"
"Now who's being melodramatic? The end of mankind. Sheesh."
Max rummaged through the crumpled pages of his play and pulled out Act I, Scene II, the scene where alien ships first appeared over New York City. "Sal, don't you think it's weird that my play is about this exact thing? I've got an alien visitation, an entire fleet that just cruises in from outer space and nobody knows anything about them. They don't try to communicate with us, and we can't contact them, just like what's happening now."
Max felt Sally turn away from him in bed, leaving his question unanswered. He set aside the play, clicked off his light, and moved his body to fit neatly beside hers. After twenty-five years of marriage, he didn't think that either of them could live without the other, and he didn't really believe that Sally wanted to try. Whatever was troubling her, they'd work it out. But he couldn't help wondering about the aliens and his play.
Max had been a schoolteacher and head of the drama club at George Madison High for thirty years. When he'd finally retired, all he wanted to do was write his own play, something unique, poignant, fresh, inventive, new. Sally had helped him get started. They'd bounced ideas around. They'd plotted and shot dialogue back and forth. Max didn't know if he completely bought into Harold Bloom's theory -- great scholar and critic Bloom was -- that nary an original thought had been penned since Shakespeare had written centuries ago. But there was certainly no excuse for Broadway productions like Saturday Night Fever, no matter how bad things got.
Max had been a science fiction fan all his life and yet he hadn't thought, at first, to write that kind of play. It was Sally who'd pushed him in that direction, and now the aliens were here, right in front of his nose, and Max felt cheated. What did the aliens want? What did they look like? What intergalactic message of peace, love, or mass destruction did they carry? Max didn't want to know the answers to any of those questions. He wanted to write his own Act III. Maybe Sally was right. Maybe he should have finished the play two years ago. He turned off the TV and went to sleep.
#
The next day Max got up before Sally and made the coffee. They had retired to a condo in West Palm Beach, Florida, Singer Island, within walking distance of the sandy beach and the gambling cruise ships, where all winter long the weather was sunny and eighty plus degrees. To Max, who had grown up in frigid Minnesota, his life had become a permanent vacation. The condo was small -- one bedroom, one bath, a cozy living room, and a miniature kitchen -- but it was home.
He went outside to get the newspaper. The breeze carried the smell of salt water from the Atlantic Ocean, and the early sun looked almost rose-colored in the clouds. A crowd of people stood on the beach in their bathing suits and flip-flops, gazing up at the sky, shading their eyes with sunglasses and umbrellas. Arnie, Max's neighbor, was out walking his little yellow mutt named Chester.
Arnie was a skinny little Texan who had given up his Stetson for a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap, the one he'd bought at the Jupiter ballpark during spring training. He was sporting his bright white Reeboks, a hotdog-red suntan, and a tank top both long and short enough to make you wonder whether he was wearing anything underneath it. Chester trotted along at his ankles, snuffling at the grass.
"Just rumors," Arnie said. "The news didn't say nothin' 'bout it, but you know how people are around here. I think Babs Crenshaw started all the fuss. She's got nothin' better to do than gossip all day long now that Oscar's dead and buried. Hey, how's that play a yers lookin'? All this news 'bout them aliens must be pretty good grist for the mill."
"You might say that. I'm still having trouble with the final scene. How's the mutt?" Max always asked after Chester.
Chester lifted his leg and christened a coconut tree. Arnie grinned. "Same tree, same pee."
Max went inside and skimmed the newspaper; it was chock full of stories about the alien ships. To his relief, no one knew what the aliens wanted, why they'd come to Earth, or where they'd come from. Oddly enough, there was no widespread panic. No riots or demonstrations or terrorism or civil disobedience or religious mania. The public had seen too many blockbuster SF flicks with phenomenal special effects, Max decided. Now that the real McCoys had arrived, it just seemed like yesterday's news. Business as usual around the globe, with two notable exceptions. Number one -- the obvious -- there were thousands of alien ships overhead. And number two -- the unexpected -- there was a dramatic increase in missing persons reports.
"Sal, you're not going to believe this." Sally had just come out of the bedroom. "People are disappearing all over the planet. Just like Act II, Scene V. Remember? Mr. Henderson strolls out his back door, Tanya walks into the tanning booth, Alex goes down to his workshop in the basement, and no one ever sees them again. The government thinks the aliens have kidnapped them. Remember?"
"Of course I remember, Max." Sally lazily filled her coffee mug and sat at the kitchen table.
Max clicked on the television to get the latest report. Some famous people had disappeared as well -- a few big league football and baseball players, some actors and directors, and a politician or two.
The Asian anchorwoman looked as if she hadn't slept a wink. "It's impossible at this point to determine just how many people are missing. No one seems to know if the aliens are responsible for the disappearances, although there seems no other reasonable explanation. Efforts to establish contact with the alien ships have been unsuccessful. One moment -- I think we're ready to go to Phil. All right, our correspondent Phillip Van Buren is standing by at the United Nations building in New York City -- What? He's gone? What do you mean he's gone? He was just -- "
Max muted the sound. "Can you believe this?"
Sally shrugged and sipped her coffee.
Max marched into the kitchen. "I don't get it. Why don't you care about what's going on with the aliens? Do you want to leave me that badly? Is our marriage that horrible? I mean, this is historic stuff for mankind, and we're living through it together -- us -- the two of us -- and all you can do is shrug and...and...what? Think about throwing away twenty-five years of a perfectly good marriage?"
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