"Wilhelm,_Kate_-_State_of_Grace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

======================
State of Grace
by Kate Wilhelm
======================

Copyright (c)1977 Kate Wilhelm
First published in Orbit 19, ed. Damon Knight, 1977

Fictionwise Contemporary
Science Fiction and Fantasy


---------------------------------
NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the purchaser. If you did not purchase this ebook directly from Fictionwise.com then you are in violation of copyright law and are subject to severe fines. Please visit www.fictionwise.com to purchase a legal copy. Fictionwise.com offers a reward for information leading to the conviction of copyright violators of Fictionwise ebooks.
---------------------------------


THE THINGS IN THE TREE were destroying my marriage. I think they were driving my husband crazy, but that is less easily demonstrated. I started a diary when I first saw them; after three entries I burned it. He would find it, I knew, and he would go out with nets and poles and catch them and sell them to a circus, or to a think tank for vivisection. He would find a way to profit.
This is all I know about them: they are small; their faces are as large as my fist; they are nut brown; they excrete their toxic wastes, if they have any, directly into the air. (Perhaps they are nuts that hatched the ultimate product. Perhaps all over the world walnuts are hatching walnut people; hazel nuts are hatching hazels; Brazil nuts are hatching wee brown Brazilians.) I don't think they ever come out of the tree. I stayed awake twenty-seven hours watching and none ever descended. I spread flour under the tree, pretending to Howard it was lime to sweeten the soil, and it was undisturbed for three days, until it rained. I wouldn't have used lime for fear of harming them if they did creep out during the darkest part of the night when my eyes were too heavy to stay open every single moment. The previous time, when I really did stay awake for twenty-seven hours, I never closed my eyes more than the normal time for blinking, and I drank nine cups of coffee during the last six hours. (I sneaked into the bushes when I had to, but I didn't close my eyes or go inside.)
Howard didn't want me to stay home and collect my unemployment. He was afraid his job as an airplane mechanic would vanish. He wants everyone to start flying again, to anywhere. Use credit if you don't have money. He thought the circles under my eyes were caused by financial worries, but I always leave worrying about money to him, because he's so good at it, and I often forget for days at a time.
He also thought that if I did stay home I should start having children. It was as good a time as any, he said, and even if he did get laid off, too, by the time the kid was born things would be back to normal again. What he really wished was that I would stay home and have his dinner ready every day and darn socks and spin and weave and churn butter and draw down an income too.
In the beginning I realized that he would make money with them, if he didn't decide they were parasites. He is more afraid of parasites than he is of other garden pests. He might have sprayed them with a biodegradable, not-harmful-to-warm-blooded-animals spray. The kind that has all sorts of precautions on the side in small print.
* * * *
I began to worry about water for them and bought a birdbath. It cost twenty dollars and we fought about it. More marriages break up because of financial disputes than any other one thing, even sexual incompatibility. But people often lie to data gatherers, and this may not be true.
I got a birdbath without any paint in the bowl, and I had to shop all day for it, and used most of the gas in the tank. ($0.58 per gallon. He noticed, of course.) I scrubbed it thoroughly, even used steel wool, just in case there was something harmful in the finish. I have to scrub it every morning, because the birds enjoy it also, but I can't believe birds drink that much water in a day. It holds two gallons.
One day for a treat I'll put gingerale in it, or juice. They might like orange juice.
I began to worry about what they were finding to eat. There are green acorns on the tree, but they are very bitter. I tried one. That's when I got the bird feeder, and during the day I kept birdseed in it, but every night after dark I slipped out and put raisins and apples and carrot sticks on it for them. Sometimes they were gone the next day and sometimes they dried up, or the squirrels got them. Howard became suspicious of the feeder and he explained to me that birds don't feed at night. I caught him watching me later when I took out the supply of food. He was solicitous for several days. Then he made a joke of it, but soon after that he was watching me again, and, I fear, watching the tree.
The tree is in the center of our back yard, mature, dense, the perfect home for them, as long as no one suspects their presence. Our house is forty years old, with as much charm as a wet dishrag, but it was cheap, and the tree was there. An oak tree inspires confidence. I wonder if they watched the builders of our house, fearful that one day one of them would bring an ax. I think they are very brave to have stayed.
I worried about other things, too. What if a young one got scraped? I left out a box of Band-Aids. What if the squirrels were too aggressive? I bought a dart game and left the darts on the feeder. What if they really wanted to communicate and didn't have any way? I bought a tiny pad, the kind that has a three-inch pen attached by a chain.
When we had a barbecue, I tried to fan the smoke away from the tree.
They know I am their friend.
* * * *
Howard brought home a dog, a great monster of a dog, with a foot-long, dripping tongue. The dog adores me, tolerates Howard, and from day one he stared at the tree for long periods of time, not barking, not threatening, but aware. Howard knew something, but he couldn't believe what he knew.
"All right," Howard said, finally, holding my shoulder too hard. "What's in the tree?"
The dog growled, and Howard released me and stood with his hands on his hips. Howard's hips are too broad for a man. I told him he should ride a bicycle to work to trim off a couple of inches. He reached for me again and the monster dog ambled over.
"Acorns. Squirrels. Leaves. A nest of cardinals."
"You know damn well what I mean!"
Perhaps they are aliens, come to save the world. They are biding their time waiting for the eve of the final cataclysm before they act. Jung says most people who believe in flying saucers believe the aliens will save us.
Perhaps they are aliens, come to take over the world. They are biding their time, waiting for their forces to gather, to generate enough energy to make it a decisive victory when they act. The ones who don't believe the above tend to believe this.
A few think they would be passive, engaging in yet another spectator sport when the end comes.
I don't think they are aliens.
Howard thought they were monkeys, escaped from a zoo or a laboratory many years ago, that managed to survive in the wild. The wild of Fairdale, Kentucky, twenty minutes from the airport where Howard mechanics.
He didn't get as good a look as I did. It is my fault he glimpsed them at all, of course, so possibly I am not the tried and true friend to them that I would like to be.
* * * *
Howard bought a camera for several hundred dollars. Airplane mechanics make very good money, more than many lawyers, especially those who work for the government. He took seven rolls of film, with thirty-six exposures on each roll. He had two hundred fifty-two pictures of oak leaves.
He took the ladder out to the tree and climbed it, but didn't stay long. All he saw was more leaves. I tried that, too, in the beginning. They are very clever at hiding. They have had thousands of years of practice. I am the first living person to have seen them clearly, and Howard, who glimpsed something that he prefers to call monkey, is the second, who almost did. We could have our names in the _Guinness Book of World Records_.
Howard called in exterminators. He didn't want them to kill anything, only identify the varmints in his tree.
The exterminators found the cardinal nest, and the squirrels, and they told us we have an infestation of southern oak moths. They produced three leaves with very small holes in them, which I am certain they made with their Bic pens. For fifty dollars they would spray the tree.
* * * *
We were hardly speaking to each other. When he came home, the first thing he did was inspect the special shelf in the refrigerator where I kept things like bing cherries, emperor grapes, Persian melons. Then he gulped down his dinner, holding his plate on his lap in order to turn around and keep the tree under observation. After dinner he sat on the patio and watched the tree until dark. Then he studied the pictures he had taken, using a magnifying glass, poring over each one for half an hour at least. By twelve he would stagger off to bed. He was looking haggard. He gave up bowling, and haircuts.