"Levy-NewHorizons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levy Robert J)

all stood gathered together, staring off in the same direction -- we saw him. It
was Huge. He ambled clumsily toward us and let out a magnificent whyyugggh!

Today everyone regarded him in a new light. He was no longer just a goofy
looking kid. There was respect on every visage.

I finally broke the silence. "Uh, so Huge, up for some stick?"

He wiggled his head yes, and we began. And it was like the day before, only
better. He put on an amazing show for us, and he seemed to know it. The sky
rippled and swayed with other worlds, and every time Huge batted he hit the ball
just a little farther, just a little higher, into a slightly different reality.
Sometimes we saw the ball rise past dying suns, vermillion with the blood of
their eternal going. Other times we saw the spaldeen fly past starships that
seemed to stretch for miles. Once, we saw the ball sucked into a black hole at
the furthest rim of nowhere-in-the-known-universe. It was hypnotic; it was
unbelievable/it was like a continuous dream.

And yet, through it all, while Huge put on his sky show, I sensed something in
him that was pained and disillusioned. While, for us, this was the ultimate
entertainment, for him it seemed to constitute something much more personal: a
quest of sorts? While we thrilled to his exhibition, he often looked glum or
distract ed, peering off into the portals he had opened as though searching for
a lost key.

Probably all of us, at some level, had a lingering suspicion that it was all an
elaborate parlor trick. I felt, as I'm sure did other kids, unsure if what I saw
was actually happening in any usual sense of the word, or if, somehow, Huge had
inserted these images in our minds. Then again, with my new enlightened attitude
toward the unpredictability of the universe -- even that neglible parcel
containing Queens -- I realized the dichotomy between the two was not so clear
as I had once thought. Was there, indeed, any difference between what was "real"
and what was "in my mind"? I was no longer certain. And that uncertainty itself
seemed to me a good thing.

So it went all that summer. Every day we'd meet in the afternoon, and Huge would
treat us to his sky show. Sometimes it would be one or two portals through which
he'd hammer a thunderous arcing homer, and we'd behold new vistas of worlds and
galaxies beyond our ken. Other times, a dozen or more portals would open and
close in rapid succession, and we'd glimpse, almost subliminally, strange
vehicles and transports past which he'd hit the ball for runs that went way off
any scorecard we might have kept. Thus, while the Burton Street Games continued
throughout that summer, in a truer sense they stopped being stickball-as-usual
on the day Huge arrived.

Which was fine all through July, when we were still numb with the novelty of
Huge's other-dimensional extravaganzas, when we were collectively as far removed
from school and responsibility as we would ever be.

But something changed around the first week of August.