"Harlan Ellison - Troublemakers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

back across the line to that dark place where they waited, always waited, till their hunger was aroused
again. And my unicorn was gone. I was alone with Lizette. I was alone with Paul. The mist died away,
and the claimers were gone, and once more it was merely a cemetery as the first rays of the morning sun
came easing through the tumble and disarray of headstones.

Westood together as one, her naked body white and virginal in my weary arms; and as the light of the sun
struck uswe began to fade, to merge, to mingle our bodies and our wandering spirits one into the other,
forming one spirit that would neither love too much, nor too little, having taken our chance on the
downhill side.

We faded and were lifted invisibly on the scented breath of that good god who had owned us, and were
taken away from there. To be born again as one spirit, in some other human form, man or woman we did
not know which. Nor would we remember. Nor did it matter.

This time, love would not destroy us. This time out, we would have luck.

The luck of silken mane and rainbow colors, platinum hoofs and spiral horn.

A LOT OF SAUCERS
I donтАЩt know about you, but I hate it when the coming attractions trailers at the Cineplex give away the
whole plot of the flick they want me to pay megabucks to see next week. Same for when they do it on
television, or in a review of some book, and they print one of those idiot тАЬspoiler warningтАЭ lines тАФ as if
we had the self-control to stop reading, or watching. So I donтАЩt want to give away the punchline of this
next story, but I need to put in right here what the troublemaker тАЬlessonтАЭ is. So let me be even more
obscure than usual. Pay attention: not everything in life is what it seems to be. On the other hand, this
psychologist named Sigmund Freud once said, тАЬSometimes a cigar is just a cigar,тАЭ meaning not
everything is necessarily a symbol for something else, in this case a phallic symbol (you could look it up).
We are usually afraid of, or suspicious of, that which we donтАЩt understand; that which is unfamiliar. So
before you start seeing enemies under the bed, and thinking somebody who dresses or looks or sounds
different from you is a threat, remember the old story about the mouse (or squirrel, or frog, whichever
version you heard) who is out on this road at midnight in the wintertime, and heтАЩs freezing his mouse,
squirrel or frog butt off, and along comes this big horse, and he sees the creature is turning blue and about
to die (or in the case of the frog, to croak), and he drops a big, fat, steaming, smelly road muffin on him.
It may be foul in there, but at least heтАЩs warm, and his life is saved. Until a fox comes along, sees him all
nice and toasty, his head sticking out, and fox takes a bite and yanks out the itty-bitty critter, and eats
him. The moral being: not everybody who dumps youin the sh-t is an enemy; not everybody who pulls
youout of the sh-t is a friend. Sometimes things are simpler than they seem. Sometimes all youтАЩre afraid
of is your own ignorance.



It wasnтАЩt just one sighting, or a covey, or a hundred. It was five thousand. Exactly five thousand of them,
and all at the same time. They appeared in the skies over Earth instantaneously.

One instant the sky was empty and grey and flecked with cloud formations . . . the next they blotted out
the clouds, and cast huge, elliptical shadows along the ground.

They were miles in diameter, and perfectly round, and there was no questioning тАФ even for an
incredulous second тАФ that they were from outer space somewhere. They hung a mile above the Earth,
over the 30th parallel. Over Los Angeles and the Sahara Desert and Baghdad and the Canary Islands