"Robert Rankin - The Greatest Show Off Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rankin Robert)

and soon it quietened and sank down in a heap. And then the being strode away once more.
Raymond watched it as it changed again to mimic the thing in a further bubble. And
he saw it change twice more before it went beyond his line of vision.
'Well bugger my old brown dog!' said Raymond. That was a sneaky trick and no
mistake. Appear before your captive in an idealized form of himself, speak a few honied
words to calm him down, then what? Hypnotize him to sleep, that was what.
Raymond nursed his tender places. If he hadn't caught his toe, he would have drifted
off along with the rest of them.
'I wonder what that fellow looks like without the special effects,' Raymond wondered.
'And I wonder what I should do for the best now. Play dead and see what happens next, I
suppose.'
And so that's exactly what Raymond did.
His stomach took to grumbling in a very hollow tone. He was cold and hungry and he
hurt. His fellow captives slept on all around him. Perhaps they were cold and hungry too.
Probably they were. Had Raymond been capable of adopting a detached attitude to the
situation, he might well have felt some admiration for the ingenuity of the Venusian shape-
shifter. No need to pay out on food for the lots before they were sold. And no screaming from
the lots to put off the buyers. It was all very clever really.
But Raymond was in no mood to adopt anything remotely resembling a detached
attitude, so he just sat and scowled and shivered.
And presently a siren sounded in the distance and a line of cars swung slowly into
view. They were big and bulbous, but hardly the kind of thing Dan Dare used to drive across
the front page of The Eagle. These had that stolid utilitarian look about them. These cars said,
"We are built for use not beauty, to be driven by folk who prefer good gas mileage to the
whimsy of aesthetics."
These were dull cars for dull people.
Raymond played dead and peered through his fingers as the cars swelled towards him
from the foreshortened perspective.
The cars drew up to park in regimented rows.
And then their occupants alighted from them.
'Oh dear,' said Raymond to himself alone. 'So that's what they look like.'
They were not pleasing to behold. They walked upon two legs with feet, and had
arms to an equal number with hands on the end. But as for the rest of them. Their bodies were
roughly egg shaped. The bellies became the heads in a seamless, chinless join. The big broad
faces were a lacklustre grey in colour.
They reminded Raymond of those Mr Potato Head outfits he used to get in his
Christmas stockings. The ones that he only got to play with a couple of times before his mum
got fed up with the waste of King Edwards and quietly consigned them to the dustbin.
And these weren't even good-looking potato heads, these were really evil-looking.
And most of them appeared to favour what was obviously the Venusian equivalent of the
shell suit.
Raymond hated them on sight. And the degree of his hatred, for which he could find
no obvious cause, save the appearance of these 'people', startled even himself by its intensity.
Because Raymond wasn't a racist.
As a child he'd puzzled over racial intolerance and once broached the subject with his
father, who was home for a brief spell between sessions at the turf accountants.
The old chap had laid aside his Sporting Life and given the matter a moment's
thought.
'Son,' said he, 'there are good and bad in all races.'
And pleased with the simple purity of this, young Raymond had gone out to play.