"Stepping Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

terrible voice. "Watch, Earthlings! Watch me and see!"
He began to grow.
The eighty thousand throats rasped in unison as every person present caught his
breath. The Viceroy lengthened, like a stretched string. Ten feet tall? He
became fifteen feet tallЧtwenty feetЧthirty. Not an inch broader, but he towered
as high as the top of the stands themselves before he was through. "See!" he
bellowed, and the giant organ voice, nowhere near the microphones now, made the
concrete walls of the Stadium shudder. "Watch now!" he commanded; and he began
to broaden. Now he was a giant, not a string man; still thirty feet tall, but
nearly ten feet across the shoulders, too. And then he began to shrinkЧonly
downwards, until he was a squashed butter-man, pressed down to a height that was
less than his thickness, an oblate spheroid with a gross flat head at the top
and gross chunky legs underneath. And then he shrank his width, until he was the
same size and shape as at first.
The halo flashed orange sparks. Mirrors? Chesley wondered. Probably it was
mirrors. All the same, it was a good thing that he hadn't been able to buy that
soda pop, because it would have gone down his windpipe.
The Viceroy thundered in a far-more-than-human voice: "I shall inform certain of
you of what their duties will be. The rest of you may continue with your
piddling little human livesЧfor the time being."
The halo flared violet. "Meanwhile," rumbled the enormous voice, "do not think
of resistance. It cannot succeed. I shall prove to you that I am invulnerable.
Absolutely invulnerable! To weaponsЧ"
A barrage of machine-gun fire from a battery at the side of the speaker's stand.
Bright yellowish tracers ricocheted up and out over the cringing audience.
"To poison gasЧ"
A man in a blue uniform climbed onto the stand and directed a flexible hose at
the Viceroy. Chesley shrugged; what difference did it make? The machine-gun
bullets had been all the evidence anyone really needed. But there was more:
"To fireЧ"
A flame-thrower squirted a flaring blob of napalm; it clung to the Viceroy's
halo; flickered; went out.
"To atomic energy"Ч Chesley half roseЧ"but I shall not demonstrate that at this
time, as too many of you would be casualties. Now you may go. My peace be with
you."
And the halo flared white, and he was gone.
Chesley slowly joined the fleeing crowd.
Such things, Chesley realized, could be faked. But they impressed him none the
less. And they impressed a lot of other peopleЧfor example, the man who went
through the exit turnstile ahead of Chesley, who was in such a sweat that he
raced through without stopping to pick up his five-dollar-bill, leaving it for
ChesleyЧalong with Chesley's own.
He came home with ten dollars and change and his wife, for the first time in
some years, was immensely pleased.
So were a very few other persons throughout the worldЧnearly one half of whom
had seen the Viceroy in person or on television, or had heard his voice on the
radio. But even they didn't stay pleased, not for very long.

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