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

Grayson turned with a start, and it was his mother, looking much
younger than he remembered her in her coffin eight years before. She came
up, and she said severely, "'Billie, don't forget your rubbers."
Grayson stared at her with eyes that kept twisting away in disbelief.
Then, deliberately, he walked over and touched her. She caught his hand,
and her fingers were warm and lifelike.
She said, "I want you to go tell your father that dinner is ready."
Grayson released himself and stepped back and looked tensely around
him. The two of them stood on an empty, grassy plain. Far in the distance
was the gleam of a silvershining river.
He turned away from her and strode on into the twilight. When he
looked back, there was no one in sight. But presently a boy was moving in
step beside him. Grayson paid no attention at first, but presently he
stole a glance at his companion.
It was himself at the age of fifteen.
Just before the gathering night blotted out any chance of
recognition, he saw that a second boy was now striding along beside the
first. Himself, aged about eleven.
Three Bill Graysons, thought Grayson. He began to laugh wildly.
Then he began to run. When he looked back, he was alone. Sobbing
under his breath, he slowed to a walk, and almost immediately heard the
laughter of children in the soft darkness. Familiar sounds, yet the impact
of them was stunning.
Grayson babbled at them, "All me, at different ages. Get away! I know
you're only hallucinations."
When he had worn himself out, when there was nothing left to his
voice but a harsh whisper, he thought, Only hallucinations? Am I sure?
He felt unutterably depressed and exhausted. "Hart and me," he said
aloud wearily, " we belong in the same asylum."
Dawn came, cool; and his hope was that sunrise would bring an end to
the madness of the night. As the slow light lengthened over the land,
Grayson looked around him in bewilderment. He was on a hill, and below him
spread his home town of Calypso, Ohio.
He stared down at it with unbelieving eyes, and then, because it
looked as real as life, he started to run toward it.
It was Calypso, but as it had been when he was a boy. He headed for
his own house. And there he was; he'd know that boy of ten anywhere. He
called out to the youngster, who took one look at him, turned away, and
ran into the house.
Grayson lay down on the lawn, and covered his eyes. "Someone," he
told himself "something is taking pictures out of my mind and making me
see them."
It seemed to him that if he hoped to remain sane - and alive - he'd
have to hold that thought.

It was the sixth day after Grayson's departure. Aboard the lifeboat,
John Hart stirred and opened his eyes. "Hungry," he said aloud to no one
in particular. He waited he knew not for what and than wearily sat up,
slipped off the cot, and made his way to the galley. When he had eaten, he
walked to the lock-door, and stood for a long time staring out over the