"Jeff Hecht - The Saucer Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hecht Jeff)

I groped for words. "I ... I ... can't bring you to them. The Brysst
have to be very careful, you know. They're not prepared for full human
contact."
"Do you understand that we are not human?" Hester asked.
I stepped back, uneasy at their closeness. "Can you prove it? You look
quite human." At the end, Melinda had claimed the alien hippies were
bioengineered to appear human, and could do everything a man or woman could.
She'd blown her top when I asked how she knew.
"We are supposed to look human, although we -- the entities you see
before you -- are only semi-autonomous biological constructs customized to
survive on your planet. You can think of us as remote operating nodes, if you
want, for the real aliens. Our race cannot survive physically on your planet.
Our metabolisms are different; some organic compounds common in your
environment are deadly toxins to our natural bodies."
There was a pause before Abigail added, "Our real bodies are in a
shielded spacecraft outside the atmosphere. We operate these biological
constructs by remote control, although they have enough autonomy to function
credibly while signals travel back and forth, or during a brief communication
failure, so they don't attract attention."
I looked back and forth between them, wondering if they were nuts or
just playing a game. "Why do you want to meet the Brysst?" I asked, stalling.
"The same curiosity that brought us here. We have investigated many
cultures on isolated planets, but we have never met another race that could
travel between the stars."
"Mr. Mills," Abigail began. "We've been here for over ten of your
years, observing. We have collected many claims of alien visits, but only
yours follows the pattern of truth. The claims of hostile aliens are bizarre,
because no violent race can master interstellar flight. Your writings about
the Brysst are different. You can contact them, can't you?"
"It takes time," I hedged, regretting that Melinda had ever convinced
me to say that in the first book. Lies will always trap you, my mother had
said every time she caught me, but I thought I had learned how to outsmart
everyone else. "You are not the only people who claim to be aliens. You will
have to convince me and then I will have to convince them." It was cruel, but
I hoped it might stop them.
I had expected some hesitation, but there was none. "That is fair,"
said Abigail. "What kind of proof do you want?"
"Show me something non-human about you. Your mechanical insides, your
spaceship, something like that."
"We are biological constructs, not mechanical. You would need very
sophisticated medical tests to tell we are not human. But we can show you our
lander. We hid it in a barn outside of town."
I had not expected them to call my bluff. Numbly, I followed them to
their big old Ford, wondering how they were planning to fake it. Abigail
started the engine and drove quietly past dark houses into the country,
crossing dark fields to a rutted dirt road that led to an old farmhouse and
barn. The buildings sat in an overgrown patch in fields of soybeans; the moon
and headlines tinted them ghostly pale. I doubted anyone had lived there in
years.
"I'm sure you understand why we conceal this from the rest of the