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

he looked like a Frenchman.
No sooner had we arrived than he came slogging right over to the jeep, bold as
you please, trudging through the sand with a big bag stuck up under one arm.
He started telling us his name, and he was still telling it to us while four
other jeeps pulled up. He spoke better English than most of our Germans, despite
having this weird accent, but it was hard to be sure at first when he spent ten
minutes telling us his name.
I was the first human being to speak to him. That's God's truth, I don't care
what anybody else tells you, it was me. I got out of the jeep and stuck out my
hand and said, "Welcome to America." I started to introduce myself, but he
interrupted me before I could get the words out.
"Herb Cranston of Cape May, New Jersey," he said. "A rocket scientist.
Excellent. I am a scientist myself." He didn't look like any scientist I'd ever


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known, but I made allowances, since he came from outer space. I was more
concerned about how he'd known my name. I asked him.
He waved his ruffles in the air, impatient. "I read your mind. That's
unimportant. Time is short, Cranston. Their ship broke up." I thought he look
more than a little sick when he said that; sad, you know, hurting, but scared
too. And tired, very tired. Then he started talking about this globe. That was
the globe with the wild card virus, of course, everyone knows that now, but back
then I didn't know what the hell he was going on about. It was lost, he said, he
needed to get it back, and he hoped for all our sakes it was still intact. He
wanted to talk to our top leaders. He must have read their names in my mind,
because he named Werner, and Einstein, and the President, except he called him
"this President Harry S Truman of yours." Then he climbed right into the back of
the jeep and sat down. "Take me to them," he said. "At once. "

Professor Lyle Crawford Kent
In a certain sense, it was I who coined his name. His real name, of course, his
alien patronymic, was impossibly long. Several of us tried to shorten it, I
recall, using this or that piece of it during our conferences, but evidently
this was some sort of breach of etiquette on his home world, Takis. He
continually corrected us, rather arrogantly I might say, like an elderly pedant
lecturing a pack of schoolboys. Well, we needed to call him something. The title
came first. We might have called him "Your Majesty" or some such, since he
claimed to be a prince, but Americans are not comfortable with that sort of
bowing and scraping. He also said he was a physician, although not in our sense
of the word, and it must be admitted that he did seem to know a good deal of
genetics and biochemistry, which seemed to be his area of expertise. Most of our
team held advanced degrees, and we addressed each other accordingly, and so it
was only natural that we fell to calling him "Doctor" as well.
The rocket scientists were obsessed with our visitor's ship, particularly with
the theory of his faster-than-light propulsion system. Unfortunately, our
Takisian friend bad burned out his ship's interstellar drive in his haste to
arrive here before those relatives of his, and in any case he adamantly refused