"Henry Kuttner - Call Him Demon " - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

'I tried as soon as I could to get away from her. She wanted to try that collar thing on me.'
'Oh.' The apology was accepted. But Beatrice still refused to talk. Jane went over to Emily's bed and put her arm around the little
girl.
'Mad at me, Emily?'
'No.'
'You are, though. I couldn't help it, honey.'
'It was all right,' Emily said, 'I didn't care.'
'All bright and shiny,' Charles said sleepily. 'Like a Christmas tree.'
Beatrice whirled on him. 'Shut up!' she cried 'Shut up, Charles! Shut up, shut up, shut up \'
Aunt Bessie put her head into the room.
'What's the matter, children?' she asked.
'Nothing, Auntie,' Beatrice said. 'We were just playing.'
Fed, temporarily satiated, it lay torpid in its curious nest. The house was silent, the occupants asleep. Even the Wrong Uncle slept,
for Ruggedo was a good mimic.
The Wrong Uncle was not a phantasm, not a mere projection of Ruggedo. As an amoeba extends a pseudopod toward food, so
Ruggedo had extended and created the Wrong Uncle. But there the parallel stopped. For die Wrong Uncle was not an elastic
extension diat could be witiidrawn at will. Rather, heтАФitтАФwas a permanent limb, as a man's arm is. From the brain through the
neural system die message goes, and the arm stretches out, the fingers constrictтАФand there is food in the hand's grip.
But Ruggedo's extension was less limited. It was not permanently bound bv rieid natural laws of rr>c,ttpr. An arm may be painted
black. And the Wrong Uncle looked and acted human, except to clear immature eyes.
There were rules to be followed, even by Ruggedo. The natural laws of a world could bind it to a certain extent. There were
cycles. The life-span of a moth-caterpillar is run by cycles, and before it can spin its cocoon and metamorphose, it must eatтАФ
eatтАФeat. Not until the time of change had come can it evade its current incarnation. Nor could Ruggedo change, now, until die
end of its cycle had come. Then there would be another metamorphosis, as there had already, in the unthinkable eternity of its
past, been a million curious mutations.
But, at present, it was bound by the rules of its current cycle. The extension could not be witiidrawn. And the Wrong Uncle was a
part of it, and it was a part of the Wrong Uncle.
The Scoodler's body and the Scoodler's head. Through the dark house beat the unceasing, drowsy waves of satietyтАФslowly,
imperceptibly quickening toward that nervous pulse of avidity that always came after the processes of indigestion and digestion
had been completed.
Aunt Bessie rolled over and began to snore. In another room, the Wrong Uncle, without waking, turned on his Back and also
snored.
The talent of protective mimicry was well developed. ...
It was afternoon again, though by only half an hour, and the pulse in the house had changed subtly in tempo and mood.
'If we're going up to Santa Barbara,' Grandmother Keaton had said, 'I'm going to take the children down to the dentist today. Their
teedi want cleaning, and it's hard enough to get an appointment with Dr. Hover for one youngster, not to mention four. Jane, your
mother wrote me you'd been to the dentist a month ago, so you needn't go.'
After that the trouble hung unspoken over die children. But no one mentioned it. Only, as Grandmother Keaton herded the kids
out on the porch, Beatrice waited till last. Jane was in the doorway, watching. Beatrice reached behind her without looking,
fumbled, found Jane's hand, and squeezed it hard. That was all.
But the responsibility had been passed on. No words had been needed. Beatrice had said plainly that it was Jane's job now. It was
her responsibility.
She dared not delay too long. She was too vividly aware of the rising tide of depression affecting the adults. Ruggedo was getting
hungry again.
She watched her cousins till they vanished beneath the pepper-trees, and the distant rumble of the trolley put a period to any hope
of their return. After that, Jane walked to the butcher shop, and bought two pounds of meat. She drank a soda. Then she came
back to the house.
She felt the pulse beating out faster.
She got a tin pan from the kitchen and put the meat on it, and slipped up to die bathroom. It was hard to reach the attic with her
burden and widiout help, but she did it. In the warm stillness beneath the roof she stood waiting, half-hoping to hear Aunt Bessie