"Edgar Pangborn - A Better Mousehole" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pangborn Edgar)

don't you go acting sur-prised on me, because I come back to talk to you. Beat-up crocks like you and
me, Al, he says, we're into middle age, we can wait a mite longer for our dreams, seeing we've spent
mor'n half a lifetime doing not much else.
While I poured him another he said, it was Lulu brought them back to me. I asked him how come.
She didn't do anything, he says, she's just overweight with a big blood pressure. They like that. They
must need the blood, maybe to help them breed. Only a couple dozen came out of that sphere, but now
they might have several colonies. I wasn't quite truthful, he says тАФ I saw them come out, and a few of
them flew around me with things in the fifth pair of limbs that look-ed like weapons. While I held still
because of that, one of them bit me and I dreamed a journey to Alpha Centauri.
Maybe, he says, they always do it merely to hold us quiet so they can drink. Maybe it's from loving
kindness.
I asked if it was true what he'd told us about the halves of the shell disappearing. Yes, he said, and he
said that afterward he went searching and grieving all over till one night he caught a bluish gleam up on
Ragged Rock Hill. He went to it, work-ing his way through the trees with a flashlight to where he thought
it had showed, and set-tled down to wait. Sure enough they came and gave him a dream. It breaks his
heart too, the way a man can't name his own.


They come for Lulu. All we did, he says, we turned off the lights and set by the open window.
Coming for Lulu be-cause she's right for them, they took care of the Judge too, and me. My dream was
a short one, Al. I don't have much blood in me.
He put down another Jame-son while I told him what I been going through. He stepped over to one
of the other back-room booths to pick something off the floor. He's a noticing restless man. Just a buckle
like a gold rosebud off of a girl's shoe. The back room gets lively Saturday nights, and I ain't been
sweeping up too good, last couple-three weeks. Only light I turned on for us was the 25-watt bulb in our
booth with the pink shadeтАФIrma chose them shades. They're real nice. You won't find no God-damn
interior desecrator that's got taste like hers. Dr. West set there playing with that gold rose-bud and going
slow on his Jame-son while I talked.
And I asked him, where do they come from?
Oh, he says, outer space, where else? He was turning the buckle in and out of the light, reflecting a
glow into the drink itself, a kind of glory. And he says, or else inner space.
I asked him did he think the bugs had anything to do with them killings. He just wiggled his shoulders.
That's when I said, Look, couldn't my Irma have a dream?
He give me no answer. I says, Maybe it would change how she acts and feels about some things?
Maybe, he says. We don't know, he says, we don't know much of anything. More we know, better
we get at asking questions we can't answer. Then he poured himself another Jame-son and after a while I
went up-stairs.
Irma wasn't asleep. When I touched her shoulder she says, God give me patience! and flounces clear
acrost the bed. I says, Irma, honey, I ain't after you thataway, I just want you could come down talk
something over with I and Doc West. West? she says. That dirty old man? What for?
I says, Irma, this is special, you give me lip I'm big enough to make you. You get up and fling some
clothes on and you take that God-damn cold cream off your face and come down. All's we want is have
a couple drinks, talk something over.


Well, she says, aren't we the lord and master all of a sudden! You goddam right, I says, and get
going. I didn't say that mean, nor she didn't take it mean, just wiped the guck off her face as meek as
anything, put on slippers, and a bathrobe over her p-js, and come along. In the light of the upstairs hall I
seen some of them goldy lights, I know I did.
 Dr. West had laid his head on his arms. Small he was, and clean as a dry stick, I don't know why she