"Theodore Sturgeon - The Perfect Host" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

me. I'm trying to get it all straight in my mind, right from the start.
I had just seen Clee and the baby. Clee looked a little tired, but her color was wonderful.
The baby looked like a baby--that is, like a little pink old man, but I told Clee she was
beautiful and takes after her mother, which she will be and do, of course, when she gets some meat
on her bones.
I came along the side path from the main entrance, toward where the car was parked. Ronnie was
waiting for me there. I saw him as I turned toward the road, just by the north building.
Ronnie was standing by the car, with one foot on the running board, and he seemed to be
talking with somebody in the second-floor window. I called out to him, but he didn't hear. Or he
paid no attention. I looked up, and saw someone in the window. It was a woman, with a crazy face.
I remember an impression of very regular white teeth, and scraggly hair. I don't think she had any
clothes on.
I was shocked, and then I was very angry. I thought, here's some poor sick person gone out of
her mind, and she'll maybe mark Ronnie for life, standing up there like that and maybe saying all
sorts of things.
I ran to the boy, and just as I reached him, the woman jumped. I think someone came into the
room behind her.
Now, look. I distinctly heard that woman's body hit. It was a terrible sound. And I remember
feeling a wave of nausea just then, but for some reason I was sure then, and I'm sure now, that it
had nothing to do with the thing I saw. That kind of shock-nausea only hits a person after the
shock, not before or during. I don't even know why I think of this at all. It's just something I
feel sure about, that's all.
I heard her body hit. I don't know whether I followed her body down with my eyes or not. There
wasn't much time for that; she didn't fall more than twenty-five, maybe twenty-eight feet.
I heard the noise, and when I looked down--there wasn't anything there!
I don't know what I thought then. I don't know if a man does actually think at a time like
that. I know I looked all around, looking for a hole in the ground or maybe a sheet of camouflage
or something which might be covering the body. It was too hard to accept that disappearance. They
say that a dog doesn't bother with his reflection in a mirror because he can't smell it, and he
believes his nose rather than his eyes. Humans aren't like that, I guess. When your brain tells
you one thing and your eyes another, you just don't know what to believe.
I looked back up at the window, perhaps thinking I'd been mistaken, that the woman would still
be up there.
She was gone, all right. There was a nurse up there instead, looking down, terrified.
I returned to Ronnie and started to ask him what had happened. I stopped when I saw his face.
It wasn't shocked, or surprised, or anything. Just relaxed. He asked me how his mother was.
I said she was fine. I looked at his face and marveled that it showed nothing of this horrible
thing that had happened. It wasn't blank, mind you. It was just as if nothing had occurred at all,
or as if the thing had been wiped clean out of his memory.
I thought at the moment that that was a blessing, and, with one more glance at the window--the
nurse had gone-- I went to the car and got in. Ronnie sat next to me. I started the car, then
looked back at the path. There was nothing there.
I suppose the reaction hit me then--that, or the thought that I had had a hallucination. If I
had, I was naturally worried. If I had not, what had happened to Ronnie?
I drove off, finally. Ronnie made some casual small talk; I questioned him about the thing,


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