"Donald A. Wollheim -The Man from the Future" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wollheim Donald A)

THE MAN FROM THE FUTURE
by Donald A. Wollheim

(Author of "Planet of Illusion," "Bones," etc.)

The midget put on a very good performance


HE WAS obviously a dwarf but not exactly the kind that circuses and midget shows
want. You see, he wasn't a perfect miniature because his head was as large as a
full grown man's even though the whole of him only came up to our belt lines.
There he stood by the door of the subway express looking more or less
disinterestedly through the glass pane of the window at the local stations
speeding by.
Jack and I were hanging on to a stanchion because the car was crowded. I was the
first to notice him because I was facing Jack and the dwarf was just behind him.
Jack glanced around when I nudged and took him in without being rude enough to
stare too blatantly.
Having just come from a meeting of our science-fiction club out in Brooklyn, we
still had all sorts of fantastic ideas on our minds. A science-fiction club, in
case you're not familiar with one, is a group of young fellows who read the
sciencefiction magazines regularly, sometimes collect them, and like to meet
once in a while to talk over the various ideas presented in them--like
interplanetary flight, Martians, time travel and so forth.
It was not unnatural therefore that upon seeing this little man we should start
to invent fantastic explanations for him. Of course we didn't believe them but
it tickled ux to whisper to each other that maybe the little man with the big
head was a Martian going about the city dressed in business clothes and hoping
people would mistake him for a circus dwarf or something. Jack said that he
couldn't be a Martian because everyone knew that Martians were at least eight
feet tall and had barrel chests. So then I suggested that he might be a man from
the future because everybody knows that men from the future will have very small
bodies and big heads to hold their big brains in.
"As a matter of fact," I whispered to Jack as we were passing De Kalb Avenue,
"he could play the part to perfection. His face is sort of odd. His nose is flat
and pudgy, his features small, and his brow does seem to bulge over his eyes."
Jack stole another look at him and nodded but added, "But he has hair on his
head and in the future everyone will be bald."
That was true of course but then we were only making believe. The dwarf had a
fair crop of wiry black hair even though there was a little bald spot towards
the back. I noticed too that his skin was sort of darker than the average and
wondered if he could have a touch of Negroid in him.
I think that we both got the bright idea at the same time. There was a big
national convention of scienceffction readers coming off in two weeks in New
York. Why not engage the little man, if he was available of course, and have him
come to the convention dressed as a man from the future? We could fool a lot of
people, get some newspaper publicity from it, and it would help out the
entertainment committee no end. We fellows who lived in New York naturally had
the organization of the convention on our hands and we had to keep thinking
about what could be done.