"Walter M. Miller - The Best of Walter M. Miller" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

"Hey!" she said in a low voice, but loud enough to pene-trate any of the nearby shadows.
There was no answer. She folded her arms behind her head and spoke again, quietly, sensually.
"Come and get me."
No black monster slithered from behind the .hedge to devour her. No panther sprang from the elm.
No succubus congealed out of wet darkness. She giggled.
"Come have a bite. "
No bull-ape came to crush her in ravenous jaws.
She had only imagined the eyes upon her. She stretched lazily and picked herself up, pausing to brush
off the leaves of grass pasted to her wet skin. It was over, the strange worship in the rain, and she was
weary. She walked slowly toward the house.
Then she heard itтАФa faint crackling sound, intermittent, distant. She stood poised in the black shadow
of the house, listening. The crackle of paper . . . then a small pop . . . then crisp fragments dropped in the
street. It was repeated at short intervals.
Taking nervous, shallow breaths, she tiptoed quietly toward the stone wall of the garden. It was six
feet high, but there was a concrete bench under the trellis. The sound was coming from over the wall. She
stood crouch-ing on the bench; then, hiding her face behind the vines, she lifted her head to peer.
The street lamp was half a block away, but she could see dimly. A man was standing across the street
in the shadows, apparently waiting for a bus. He was eating peanuts out of a paper bag, tossing the shells
in the street. That explained the crackling sound.
She glared at him balefully from behind the trellis. "I'll claw your eyes out," she thought, "if you
came and peeped over my wall."
"Hi!" the man said.
Lisa stiffened and remained motionless. It was impos-sible that he could see her. She was in shadow,
against a dark background. Had he heard her foolish babbling a moment ago?
More likely, he had only cleared his throat.
"Hi!" he said again.
Her face was hidden in the dripping vines, and she could not move without rustling. She froze in place,
star-ing. She could see little of him. Dark raincoat, dark hat, slender shadow. Was he looking toward
her? She was desperately frightened.
 Suddenly the man chucked the paper hag in the gutter, stepped off the curb, and came sauntering
across the street toward the wall. He removed his hat, and crisp blond hair glinted in the distant
streetlight. He stopped three yards away, smiling uncertainly at the vines.
Lisa stood trembling and frozen, staring at him in horror. Strange sensations, utterly alien, passed over
her in waves. There was no describing them, no understanding them.
"IтАФI found you," he stammered sheepishly. "Do you know what it is?"
"I know you," she thought. "You have a small scar on the back of your neck, and a mole
between your toes. Your eyes are blue, and you have an impacted wisdom tooth, and your feet are
hurting you because you walked all the way out here from the University, and I'm almost old
enough to be your mother. But I can't know you, because I've never seen you before!"
"Strange, isn't it?" he said uncertainly. He was holding his hat in his hand and cocking his head politely.
"What?" she whispered.
He shuffled his feet and stared at them. "It must be some sort of palpable biophysical energy form,
analyti-cally definableтАФif we had enough data. Lord knows, I'm no mystic. If it exists, it's got to be
mathematically definable. But why us?"
Horrified curiosity made her step aside and lean her arms on the wall to stare down at him. He looked
up bashfully, and his eyes widened slightly.
"Oh!"
"Oh what?" she demanded, putting on a terrible frown.
"You're beautiful!"
"What do you want?" she asked icily. "Go away!"