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

learned that Rimb was of the Ghottich Persuasion. It was an interesting-sounding
sexual designation, especially for someone like me who was trying to get beyond
the male-female dichotomy. I thought it might be fun to mate with someone of the
Ghottich Persuasion after Rimb and I had agreed that she was basically a her.
Later I checked with Father Hanlin at the Big Red Church. He said it was OK in
the eyes of the church, though he personally didn't hold much with it. Rimb and
I were one of the first alien-human marriages.
We moved into my apartment in the West Village. You didn't see a lot of aliens
around here at first. But soon other alien people showed up and quite a few of
them moved into our neighborhood.
No matter where they were from, all aliens were supposed to register with the
police and the local authorities in charge of cult control. Few bothered,
however. And nothing was ever done about it. The police and municipal
authorities were having too much trouble keeping track of their own people.
I wrote stories for the Synestrian market and Rimb and I lived quietly with our
house guests. The Bayersons were quite people and helped pay the rent. They were
easygoing aliens who didn't worry much; not like Rimb, who worried a lot about
everything.
At first I liked the Bayerson's ways, I thought they were easygoing and cool.
But I changed my mind the day the burglars stole their youngest child, little
Claude Bayerson.
I should have mentioned that the Bayersons had a baby soon after moving in with
us. Or perhaps they had left the baby somewhere else and brought it in after
they'd taken over our spare bedroom. We were never really clear on where the
aliens came from, and their babies were a complete mystery to us.
The way the Bayersons told it, the kidnapping of little Claude was simple and
straightforward. It was "Good-bye, Claude." "Good-bye, Daddy." When we asked
them how they could do that, they said, "Oh, it's perfectly all right. I mean,
it's what we were hoping for. That's how we Bayersons get around. Someone steals
our children."
Well, I let it drop. What can you do with people like that? How could they stand
to have little Claude raised as a Bernardean silver thief? One race one day,
another race another. Some aliens have no racial pride. I mean it was cuckoo.
There wasn't anything to do about it so we all sat down to watch the TV
together. All of us wanted to see the Savannah Reed show, our favorite.
Savannah's main guest that evening was the first man ever to eat a Mungulu. He
was quite open about it, even somewhat defiant. He said, "If you think about it,
why should it be ethical to eat only stupid creatures, or deluded ones? It is
only blind prejudice that keeps us from eating intelligent beings. This thought
came to me one day recently while I was talking with a few glotch of Mungulu on
a plate."
"How many Mungulu make up a glotch?" Savannah asked. She's no dummy.
"Between fifteen and twenty, though there are exceptions."
"And what were they doing on a plate?"
"That's where Mungulu usually hang out. Accumulate, I should say. You see,
Mungulu are plate-specific."
"I don't think I know this species," Savannah said.
"They're pretty much unique to my section of Yonkers."
"How did they get there?"
"They just pretty well showed up on my plate one night. First only one or