"Mel Gilden - Zoot Marlow 2 - Hawaiian UFO Aliens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gilden Mel)

I took a step forward and stopped when a small furry creature with long ears hopped into the kitchen.
When it saw me, its nose twitched in a provocative T'toomian way. Instinctively. I twitched back till I
caught myself. The creature might have been moulded from one of the clouds outside.
'What's that?' I said.
'It's a rabbit, doc,' Bill said.
'What's it doing here?' The question took on new meaning when another rabbit joined it, this one
having brown spots. The two rabbits took slow, ungainly hops across the kitchen toward us. One of
them stopped and left a deposit on the kitchen floor. What it left behind looked like boxed breakfast
food, but it smelled the way the house now smelled.
In the living room, rabbits in assorted colours were everywhere. Great shoals of them covered the
floor. A line of them was sitting on the back of the couch, and another was on the mantle of the fireplace.
A couple were even in the fireplace. Every one was twitching its nose. A few of them were gnawing on a
sandwich that had been on the floor since before I'd returned from T'toom. Another one was working on
some flowers that Hanger and Flopsie (or was it Mopsie?) had been nurturing on the window sill.
The surfers were sitting on the couch, watching Captain Hook with various levels of interest. As the
Captain sang the little song with enthusiasm, he threw a scarf over his palm, and a moment later, a long,
slender shape grew under it. He pulled the scarf away. The big surprise was that under the scarf was not
a rabbit but a flower on a long stem. With a theatrical flourish, he handed the flower to either Flopsie or
Mopsie. Whoever it was giggled and took it.
As Captain Hook started another trick, Whipper Will said, 'What's happening, dude?'
 'Shouldn't that be "what's up, doc?"' Bill said, and yocked as if that were funny.
A smile passed over Whipper Will's face like the shadow of clouds over water.
I said, 'Los Angeles must have giant hats wash up on the beach all the time. This one brings out one
squad car with a couple of clowns who'd make out parking tickets in crayon, one half-bright scientist
with a trunk full of stuff out of a horror movie that told him nothing a guy with two eyes and a brain didn't
already know, and a gang of tough bots from the pot hole brigade.'
Captain Hook lowered the sheet of newspaper that he'd begun to tear, and listened to me. But his
hands kept moving as if they were all grown up and had lives of their own. While we talked, he walked
dreamily around the room and the hands kept dipping into thingsтАФhis pockets, the flower pot on the
window sill, paper bags, coffee cups, shoesтАФand every time one of them came up, it was full of rabbit. It
was some trick, really, but it got old fast.
Will took a rabbit away from Captain Hook and found a place for it on top of the television. He said,
'The big hat is just too weird for wordsтАФstraight out of the Twilight Zone, dig? Nobody wants to look
like a lop if this is just a publicity stunt or somethingтАФthey could get really dogged. So the big kahunas
downtown are just hanging loose and cruising. They'd probably get more cranked about it if hats did
wash up on the beach every day.'
Captain Hook snapped his fingers and said brightly, 'You know what I really need? I really need a
tuxedo. And some doves and rope, and a set of linking rings, and a deck of cards, and a little carrot
guillotine.' He held up his hands to show how bigтАФnot very. 'I have to make a list.' He walked toward
the kitchen.
Bingo said. 'Now I know he's really drilled. Captain Hook never made a list of anything in his life.'
The other surfers agreed.
'Come on,' I said, and pulled Whipper Will out to the kitchen. Bill followed us and hopped up onto a
chair next to where Captain Hook was sitting at the table licking the tip of a pencil. He'd put out a bunch
of carrots, and the three rabbits on the table were making loud crunching sounds as they consumed them.
Bill began to pet the rabbits, giving them each a turn.
Out the window, I could see the workbots had set up a barrier of yellow sawhorses to keep back the
crowd. The machinery hadn't had any noticeable effect on the hat, but progress had been made. The
tweedy guy had taken off his coat.
I slid into a chair on the side of the Captain and said, 'How you feeling, dude?'