"Tom Easton - The Bung Hole Caper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

She nodded. Her gray hair bobbed. Her thin lips pursed. She smelled of the kitchen and soap. Her thigh
was soft against his haunch, and he remembered.... The past, their past, was far from dead, but though he
still loved her, she wasn't the girl he had married, the girl who had left him for college and then returned
for a farmer's life. She said, murmuring, "I suppose it must have been learning how to build their own
shells that let them get smart enough for civilization, then."

"Skin," the alien burbled. "Wood. Metal. Plastic. Food?"

"What would you like?" asked Allie.
"Egg? Cheese? Potato, mash?"

"Right away." She rose to her feet, as graceful as ever, and headed toward the back of the barn and the
door to the hen house. In a minute she was back, an egg in her hand. She laid it down before the barrel.
A tentacle enfolded it and hauled it within. There was a crunch and a sound of sucking. "Thank."

"They aren't very big today, are they?" said Allie. She left again. While she was gone, Cyrus peered
through the widened bung-hole. Despite the holes, it was still dark in there, and he had to lean close to
make out the broken egg, cradled in a nest of tentacles beneath a writhing mass of mouthparts. He leaned
too close, in fact, for when the alien was done, the discarded shell bounced off his brow. He rocked
back on his haunches with a muttered curse. "No manners," he said. "None at all."

"Whatever do you mean?" asked Allie. She was back, standing behind him, her apron sagging with the
weight of eight more eggs. "Maybe you shouldn't have been prying. I imagine it likes its privacy as much
as we do."

"Then it should have stood at home."

"Enough of that, Cyrus!" She scooched beside the barrel and laid her eggs down on the floor. She held
one out toward the bung-hole. "Would you like another?"

"Thank." A tentacle plucked the egg from her grasp. There was another crunching, sucking sound. She
added, "It's a stranger, Cyrus. Away from home, and it probably doesn't know how it's going to get
back. We should be nice to it."

"I suppose we should, Allie." They had always been as hospitable as they knew how, with friends and
strangers alike. Every winter saw at least one stranded motorist warming himself before their stove and
dining at their table, even passing the night in their guest-room bed. But never before had they hosted a
stranger as strange as this one. "But I am curious."

"I know. I don't think anyone's seen them naked."

The alien had obviously been listening. "No," it burbled, discarding the second eggshell. "Fear. Eat, be.
Call? Phone?"

"You want us to call your friends? At the UN?"

"Yes. Please. Thank."

As they stood, another egg disappeared into the bung-hole. "I'll just leave them all," said Allie. "The poor
thing's probably hungry."