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

When she returned to bed, she tried to pray but it was as if the prayer were being watched. Someone
was listening, eavesdropping from outside.
Kenneth Grearly appeared in her dreams, stood half-shrouded in a slowly swirling fog. He stared at
her with his head cocked aside, smiling slightly, holding his hat respectfully in his hands.
"Don't you realize, Mrs. Waverly, that we are mutants perhaps?" he asked politely.
"No!" she screamed. "I'm happily married and I have three children and a place in society! Don't
come near me!"
He melted slowly into the fog. But echoes came monot-onously from invisible cliffs: mutant mutant
mutant mutant mutant ...
Dawn came, splashing pink paint across the eastern sky. The light woke her to a dry and empty
consciousness, to a headachy awareness full of dull anxiety. She arose wearily and trudged to the kitchen
for a pot of coffee.
Lord! Couldn't it all be only a bad dream?
In the cold light of early morning, the things of the past night looked somehow detached, unreal. She
tried to ana-lyze objectively.
That sense of sharing a mind, a consciousness, with the stranger who came out of the shadowsтАФwhat
crazy thing had he called it?тАФ"some sort of palpable biophysical energyform, analytically definable. "
"If I invented the stranger, " she thought, "I must have also invented the words."
But where had she heard such words before?

Lisa went to the telephone and thumbed through the directory. No Grearly was listed. If he existed at
all, he probably lived in a rooming house. The UniversityтАФlast night she had thought that he had
something to do with the University. She lifted the phone and dialed.
"University Station; number please," the operator said.
IтАФuhтАФdon't know the extension number. Could you tell me if there is a Kenneth Grearly connected
"


with the school?"
Student or faculty, Madam?"
"


"I don't know."
"Give me your number, please, and I'll call you back." "Lawrence 4750. Thanks, Operator."
She sat down to wait. Almost immediately it rang again. "Hello?"
Mrs. Waverly, you were calling me?" A man's voice. His voice!
"


"The operator found you rather quickly." It was the only thing she could think of saying.
"No, no. I knew you were calling. In fact, I hoped you into it."
"Hoped me? Now look here, Mr. Grearly, IтАФ"
"You were trying to explain our phenomenon in terms of insanity rather than telepathy. I didn't want
you to do that, and so I hoped you into calling me."
Lisa was coldly speechless.
What phenomenon are you talking about?" she asked after a few dazed seconds.
"
 Still repressing it? Listen, I can share your mind any time I want to, now that I understand where and
"