"A. E. Van Vogt - The Rat & the Snake & Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Vogt A E)

I nodded. I had a feeling that I was witnessing a drama the motivations of which I did not
understand. I realized that I was watching Silkey intently.
He looked at the picture on the card, and then started to hand it to me. Then he stopped. Jerkily,
he pulled the card back, and stared at the photograph.
"For cripes sake," he gasped. "It's a picture of me."
There was no doubt about his surprise. It was so genuine that it startled me. I said:
"Didn't you send that to me? Didn't you write what's on the back there?"
Silkey did not answer immediately. He turned the card over and glared down at the writing. He
began to shake his head.
"Doesn't make sense," he muttered. "Hmmm, it was mailed in Marstown. That's where we were
three days last week."
He handed it back to me. "Never saw it before in my life. Funny."
His denial was convincing. I held the card in my hand, and looked questioningly at the cat. But it
had already lost interest. As we stood there, watching, it turned and climbed back up to the dais,
and slumped into a chair. It yawned. It closed its eyes.
And that's all that happened. We all left the tent, and Virginia and I said goodbye to Silkey.
Later, on our way home, the episode seemed even more meaningless than when it had happened.
I don't know how long I had been asleep before I wakened. I turned over intending to go right
back to sleep. And then I saw that my bedside light was burning. I sat up with a start.
The cat was sitting in a chair beside the bed, not more than three feet away.
Part Two of
THE CATAAAA
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9
THERE WAS silence. I couldn't have spoken at the beginning. Slowly, I sat up. Memory came
of what the guide at the show had said... "Harmless!" But I didn't believe that anymore.
Three times now this beast had come here, twice to leave messages. I let my mind run over those
messages, and I quailed " . . . The cat wants to talk to you!" Was it possible that this thing could
talk.
The very inactivity of the animal finally gave me courage. I licked my lips and said:
"Can you talk?"
The cat stirred. It raised an arm in the unhurried fashion of somebody who does not want to
cause alarm. It pointed at the night table beside my bed. I followed the pointing finger and saw
that an instrument was standing under the lamp. The instrument spoke at me:
"I cannot emit human sounds with my own body, but as you can hear this is an excellent
intermediary."
I have to confess that I jumped, that my mind scurried into a deep corner of my head--and only
slowly came out again as the silence continued, and no attempt was made to harm me. I don't
know why I should have assumed that its ability to speak through a mechanical device was a
threat to me. But I had.
I suppose it was really a mental shrinking, my mind unwilling to accept the reality that was here.
Before I could think clearly, the instrument on the table said:
"The problem of conveying thoughts through an electronic device depends on rhythmic
utilization of brain energies."
The statement stirred me. I had read considerable on that subject, beginning with Professor Hans
Berger's report on brain rhythms in 1929. The cat's statements didn't quite fit.
"Isn't the energy potential too small?" I asked. "And besides you have your eyes open. The
rhythms are always interfered with when the eyes are open, and in fact such a large part of the
cortex yields to the visual centers that no rhythm whatever is detectable at such times."
It didn't strike me then, but I think now that I actually distracted the animal from its purpose.