"George R. R. Martin - WC 1 - Wild Cards" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

file:///F|/rah/George%20R.%20R.%20Martin/Martin,%20George%20R.%20R%20-%20Wildcards%201%20-%20Wildcards.txt

WildcardsWildcards
Book 1 of Wildcards
Edited by George R.R. Martin
ISBN: 0-553-26190-8


PROLOGUE
From Wild Times: An Oral History of the Postwar Years, by Studs Terkel
(Pantheon, 1979).
Herbert L. Cranston
Years later, when I saw Michael Rennie come out of that flying saucer in The Day
the Earth Stood Still, I leaned over to the wife and said, "Now that's the way
an alien emissary ought to look." I've always suspected that it was Tachyons
arrival that gave them the idea for that picture, but you know how Hollywood
changes things around. I was there, so I know how it really was. For starts, he
came down in White Sands, not in Washington. He didn't have a robot, and we
didn't shoot him. Considering what happened, maybe we should have, eh?
His ship, well, it certainly wasn't a flying saucer, and it didn't look a damn
thing like our captured V-2s or even the moon rockets on Werner's drawing
boards. It violated every known law of aerodynamics and Einstein's special
relativity too.
He came down at night, his ship all covered with lights, the prettiest thing I
ever saw. It set down plunk in the middle of the proving range, without rockets,
propellers, rotors, or any visible means of propulsion whatsoever. The outer
skin looked like it was coral or some kind of porous rock, covered with whorls
and spurs, like something you'd find in a limestone cavern or spot while
deep-sea diving.
I was in the first jeep to reach it. By the time we got there, Tach was already
outside. Michael Rennie, now, he looked right in that silvery-blue spacesuit of
his, but
Tachyon looked like a cross between one of the Three Musketeers and some kind of
circus performer. I don't mind telling you, all of us were pretty scared driving
out, the rocketry boys and eggheads just as much as the GIs. I remembered that
Mercury Theater broadcast back in '39, when Orson Welles fooled everybody into
thinking that the Martians were invading New Jersey, and I couldn't help
thinking maybe this time it was happening for real. But once the spotlights hit
him, standing there in front of his ship, we all relaxed. He just wasn't scary.
He was short, maybe five three, five four, and to tell the truth, he looked more
scared than us. He was wearing these green tights with the boots built right
into them, and this orangy shirt with lace sissy ruffles at the wrists and
collar, and some kind of silvery brocade vest, real tight. His coat was a
lemon-yellow number, with a green cloak snapping around in the wind behind him
and catching about his ankles. On top of his head he had this wide-brimmed hat,
with a long red feather sticking out of it, except when I got closer, I saw it
was really some weird spiky quill. His hair covered his shoulders; at first
glance, I thought he was a girl. It was a peculiar sort of hair too, red and
shiny, like thin copper wire.
I didn't know what to make of him, but I remember one of our Germans saying that