"Robert Sheckley. The Day The Aliens Came (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

eyes toward the living room and shrugged. I went in and saw there were two
people there. Without saying a word, I went back to the kitchen and said to
Rimb, "Who are they?"
"They told me they're the Bayersons."
"Aliens?"
She nodded. "But not my kind of aliens. They're as alien to me as they are to
you."
That was the first time I fully appreciated that aliens could be alien to one
another.
"What are they doing here?" I asked.
"They didn't say," Rimb said.
I went back to the living room. Mr. Bayerson was sitting in my armchair reading
an evening newspaper. He was about three or four feet tall and had orange hair.
Mrs. Bayerson was equally small and orange-haired and she was knitting something
orange and green. Mr. Bayerson scrambled out of my chair as soon as I returned
to the room.
"Aliens?" I said, sitting down.
"Yes," Bayerson said. "We're from Capella."
"And what are you doing in our place?"
"They said it would be all right."
"Who said?"
Bayerson shrugged and looked vague. I was to get very accustomed to that look.
"But it's our place," I pointed out.
"Of course it's yours," Bayerson said. "Nobody's arguing that. But would you
begrudge us a little space to live in? We're not very big."
"But why our place? Why not someone else's?"
"We just sort of drifted in here and liked it," Bayerson said. "We think of
it as home now."
"Some other place could also feel like home."
"Maybe, maybe not. We want to stay here. Look, why don't you just consider
us like barnacles, or brown spots on the wallpaper. We just sort of attach
on here. It's what Capellans do. We won't be in the way."
Rimb and I didn't much want them, but there seemed no overpowering reason to
make them go. I mean, they were here, after all. And they were right, they
really weren't in the way. In some ways, they were a lot better than some other
apartment-dwelling aliens we came to know later.
In fact, Rimb and I soon wished the Bayersons would be a little less unobtrusive
and give a little help around the apartment. Or at least keep an eye on things.
Especially on the day the burglars came in.
Rimb and I were out. The way I understood it, the Bayersons didn't do a thing to
stop them. Didn't call the police or anything, Just watched while the burglars
poked around the place, moving slowly, because they were so overweight, fat
alien thieves from Barnard's Star. They took all of Anna's old silver. They were
Barnardean silver thieves and their traditions went back a long way. That's what
they told the Bayersons, while they robbed us, and while Mr. Bayerson was going
through his eyelid exercises just like nothing at all was happening.
The way it all started, I had met Rimb in Franco's Bar on MacDougal Street in
New York. I had seen a few aliens before this, of course, shopping on Fifth
Avenue or watching the ice skaters in Rockefeller Center. But this was the first
time I'd ever actually ever talked with one. I inquired as to its sex and