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

The clouds had broken, and stars shone brightly, but there was no moon. Lucey moved by instinct,
knowing each inch of land for half a mile around the shack.
She sat on a wet and rotting log in the edge of the palmetto thicket, laid the shotgun across her lap,
stuffed a corncob pipe with tobacco from Deevey's field, and sat smoking in the blackness while
whippoorwills mourned over the land, and an occasional owl hooted from the swamp. The air was cool
and clean after the rain, and only a few night birds flitted in the brush while crickets chirped in the
distance and tree frogs spoke mysteriously.
AAAaaaAAaaarrrwww ... Na!"
"


The cry was low and piercing. Was it Doodie, having another spasmтАФor only a dream? She
half-arose, then paused, listening. There were a few more whimpers, then silence. A dream, she decided,
and settled back to wait. There was nothing she could do for Doodle, not until the State Healthmobile
came through again, and examined him for "catchin' " ailments. If they found he wasn't right in the mind,
they might take him away.
The glowing ember in the pipe was hypnoticтАФthe only thing to be clearly seen except the stars. She
stared at the stars, wondering about their names, until they began to crawl before her eyes. Then she
looked at the ember in the pipe again, brightening and dimming with each breath, acquiring a lacy crust of
ashes, growing sleepy in the bowl and sinking deeper, deeper, while the whippoor-wills pierced the night
with melancholy.
... Na na naaaAAAAhhhaaa
When the cries woke her, she knew she had slept for some time. Faint moonlight seeped through the
pine branches from the east, and there was a light mist over the land. The air had chilled, and she
shivered as she arose to stretch, propping the gun across the rotten log. She waited for Doodie's cries to
cease.
The cries continued, unabated.
Stiffening with sudden apprehension, she started hack toward the shack. Then she saw itтАФa faint
violet glow through the trees to the north, just past the corner of the hen house! She stopped again, tense
with fright. Doodie's cries were becoming meaningful.
"Pa! I can't stand it any closer! Naa, naaa! I can't think, I can't think at all. No, please...."
Reflexively, Lucey started to bolt for the house, but checked herself in time. No lamp burned in the
window. She picked up the shotgun and a pebble. After a nervous pause, she tossed the pebble at the
porch.
It bounced from the wall with a loud crack, and she slunk low into shadows. Doodie's cries continued
without pause. A minute passed, and no one emerged from the house.
A sudden metallic sound, like the opening of a metal door, came from the direction of the violet light.
Quickly she stepped over the log and pressed back into the scrub thicket. Shaking with fear, she waited
in the palmettos, crouching in the moonlight among the spiny fronds, and lifting her head occasionally to
peer toward the violet light.
She saw nothing for a time, and then, gradually the moonlight seemed to dim. She glanced upward. A
tenuous shadow, like smoke, had begun to obscure the face of the moon, a translucent blur like the
thinnest cloud.
At first, she dismissed it as a cloud. But it writhed within itself, curled and crawled, not dispersing, but
seeming to swim. Smoke from the violet light? She watched it with wide, upturned eyes.
Despite its volatile shape, it clung together as a single entity as smoke would never have done. She
could still see it faintly after it had cleared the lunar disk, scintillat-ing in the moon-glow.
It swam like an airborne jellyfish. A cluster of silver threads it seemed, tangled in a cloud of
filamentsтАФor a giant mass of dandelion fluff. It leaked out misty pseudo-pods, then drew them back as it
pulled itself through the air. Weightless as chick-down, huge as a barn, it flewтАФand drifted from the