"Thomas A. Easton - Movers and Shakers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

Movers and Shakers
by Tom Easton
_First appeared in Analog, November 1979_

I'm no great shakes. Not for looks. Not for smarts. I've never claimed otherwise. How could I? I make
my nut with a battered pickup, moving furniture, junk, garbage, whatever folks'll hire me for. Maybe
you've seen my ad: "Light Hauling. Cheap. Reliable. Call 382-5877." It's nothing much, but it feeds me
and pays the rent. I'm not married, never have been. Never could find a girl who wanted much to do with
me, but then that's one expense I haven't got.

But the alien didn't know all that. I thought. There he was, three feet high, sitting or standing or squatting,
whatever he called it, on my doorstep. One squirmy looking finger, like an octopus' arm except it didn't
have any suckers, was still hanging in the air where the knocker had been until I opened the door. His
eyes, black and wet, with no whites, were buried in folds of scaly skin. He looked like a cross between a
fish and a squid. Smelled like one too. He sounded like -- like God knows what. Think of an accordion
that's been soaked for a month in molasses. That's not quite it, but it'll give you the flavor of it. His voice
was slow and sticky, and it came out of a hole about where you'd expect a mouth to be.

The alien was saying something, but I wasn't hearing. I was staring. I'd read enough sci-fi to know this
thing in front of me was an alien. It had to be, though blobs like this had been out of style since the
thirties. And even then people had preferred aliens that looked at least vaguely human. Maybe I'd been
drinking too much lately?

Too much booze in me or not, this thing was no hallucination. When I didn't answer him right away, he
reached out and touched me on the chest with a finger. Or was it an arm? As far as I could see, it and
fifty others just like it emerged directly from the creature's side.

That made them arms, right?

He touched me again, in the general neighborhood of the empty buttonhole over my navel. I stopped
gaping and said, "What do you want?" Very intelligent of me, but then I told you I wasn't much on smart.
Besides, I wasn't altogether cool, calm, and collected at the moment.

"You are over your shock, yes? You have never seen my like before, but you can accept me, yes?" His
wheeze was hard to listen to, but I could make it out. He was right, too. I could accept him, at least until
he tried to crawl back into a bottle. I nodded vaguely and stepped aside. I waved him inside the door,
gaping again when I saw how he moved. Like a centipede on all those arms. Or were they fingers? It
really was better that he get inside out of sight. There was no telling what the neighbors would say if they
saw him. Get me jugged, for sure. Keeping wild animals, dangerous pets, public nuisances, or something
-- if they didn't riot. It was a crummy neighborhood, but good enough so everyone could look down on
me.

I closed the door behind him and followed him into the living room. Bedroom, too, for that matter, and
kitchen. I sat down on the edge of the couch I used for a bed and waited for him to say something else.

"Call me Wirtz," he said.

"I'm Fordy." Then, thinking he might want something more formal, I added, "Sanford Randall. Though
folks just call me Fordy."
"I know this. I also know you are illegitimate and have an IQ of 93. You are a virgin, an alcoholic, and a