"Vukcevich-NoComet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vukcevich Ray)

irresponsible. If everyone thought like you, no one would vote."

"Who's talking about voting? We're sitting around the kitchen table with grocery
sacks over our heads!"

Sacha giggled.

I decided to try silence on Jane. I could hear my own breathing against the
sides of the bag, and with any little movement there was a rustle like dry
autumn leaves in a green plastic trash sack. I could hear birds, too. They would
be in the feeder outside the window over the sink. They would fly away if they
caught us looking at them. I could pull the bag away from my face a little and
look straight down and see my white shirt over the gut hanging into my lap. I
could suck the gut in; I could sigh it out. I could see my tan slacks, my black
loafers, and the black and white kitchen tiles.

Strange, but I couldn't see the name of our grocery store through the bag. Had I
put the bag on backwards? I twisted it around. I still couldn't see the letters,
and then I didn't know which way the bag was. Were the red letters to the front
or to the back? I felt unhooked, disoriented, lost.

Things suddenly got brighter. It is my opinion that was when the comet touched
the atmosphere, and because it didn't hit just then, I think the last person on
Earth quit looking at it at precisely that moment.

"Don't you see the sudden light of the fire?"

"A cloud probably just moved away from the sun," Jane said.

I thought I heard some uncertainty in her voice. "That's what you'd like to
think," I said.

"How long are we going to play this game, Tim?"

How long? Why, just until the comet's gone, I almost said. It hit me then that
Jane's question was a good one. If finally no one was looking at the comet, did
that mean it went away, or did it mean the comet was hanging frozen just inside
the atmosphere, filling the entire sky, ready to plunge down on us as soon as we
looked? Didn't that mean we could never look? Didn't that mean we were doomed to
sit there at the kitchen table with bags over our heads forever?

"It makes no sense," Jane said. "What about intelligences on other planets? What
if some alien shaman is looking at your comet through a telescope?"

"One of your saucer people?"

"At least there's good evidence for them. Unlike your stupid comet."

"Jane," I said, "if you looked out the window right now you'd see the sky filled
with fire, and just because you looked, the comet would crash down and blow us