"Spider Robinson - User Friendly" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

her coat and boots were still in the hall closet. I couldn't imagine her unlocking the door for anyone we
didn't know, certainly not for someone who could snatch her out the door in two seconds without the
slightest sound or struggle. I actually found myself looking under chairs for her.
"So eventually I phoned the police, and got all the satisfaction you'd expect, and called everyone we
knew with no success at all, and finally I fell asleep at four A.M. hoping to God it was some kind of
monstrous joke she was playing on me.
"Two government guys in suits came that night. They told me what had happened to her. `Sir, your
wife has been requisitioned by aliens. Quite a few people's husbands and wives have been. And we
wouldn't do anything about it if we could, which we can't.' They were good; I never laid a hand on them.
When I calmed down enough they took me to the hospital to see her. She was in pretty good shape, all
things considered. Her feet were a mess, of course, from walking the streets barefoot. Exposure, fatigue.
After the aliens turned her loose, she was raped by four or five people before the police found her. You
remember New York at night. But they didn't cut her up or anything, just raped her. She told me she
almost didn't mind that. She said it was a relief to be only physically raped. To be able to struggle if she
wanted, even if it didn't help. To at least have the power to protest." He stubbed his cigarette out and
finished his drink. "Strange. She was just as naked while she was possessed, but no human tried to touch
her until afterward Like, occupado, you know?"
Greg gave him his own, untouched drink. "Go on."
"Well, God, we talked. You know, tried to talk. Mostly we cried. And then in the middle of a snuffle
she chopped off short and got up out of the hospital bed and left the room. I was so mixed up it took me
a good five seconds to catch on. When I did I went nuts. I tried to chase after her and catch her, and the
two government guys stopped me. I broke the nose of one of them, and they wrestled me into
somebody's room and gave me a shot. As it was taking hold I turned and looked sideways out the
window, just in time to catch a glimpse of her, three flights down, walking through the parking lot. Silly
little hospital gown, open at the back, paper slippers. Nobody got in her way. A doctor was walking in
the same direction; he was a zombie too. Masked and gloved, blood on his gloves; I hope he finished his
operation first. . .тАЭ
"She came home the next day, and we had about six hours. Long enough to say everything there was to
say five times, and a bunch of other things that maybe should never have been said. This time when she
left, she left dressed, with an empty bladder and money to get home with when they let her go. We had
accepted it, taken the first step in starting to plan around it. Only practical, right?" He shook his head,
hearing his neck crack, and finished off the second drink. It had no more effect than had the first.
"What happened then?"
"I got in the car and drove here."
For the first time, Greg looked deeply shocked. "You left her there, to deal with it alone?"
Someone grasped Sam's heart in impersonal hands and wrung it out. Greg must have seen the pain, and
some of the accusatory tone left his voice. "Jesus wept, Sam! Look, I know you. You've written three
entire books on brain-washing and mind-control, `the ultimate obscenity,' you call it: I know how

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uniquely horrible the whole thing must be to you, and for you. But you've been married to Marian for
ten years, as long as I've been married to AliceтАФhow could you possibly have left her?"
The words came out like projectile vomit. "I had to, God damn it: I was scared!"
"Scared? Of what?"
"Of them, for Christ's sake, what's the matter with you? Scared that the thing would look out of her
eyes and notice meтАФand decide that I looked ... Useable." He began to shudder, and found it extremely
hard to stop. He lit another cigarette with shaking hands.
"Sam, it doesn't work that wayтАФ"