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

two glotch of them. They looked like little oysters. Then more came so we
had the half dozen or so it takes to generate a halfway decent
conversation."
"Did they say were they were from?"
"A planet called Espadrille. I never did quite catch where it was,
quadrantwise."
"Did they say how they got here?"
"Something about surfing the light-waves."
"What gave you the idea of eating the Mungulu?"
"Well, I didn't think about it at all at first. When a creature talks to
you, you don't right away think of eating him. Or her. Not if you're
civilized. But these Mungulu started showing up on my plate every night.
They were pretty casual about it. All lined up on the edge of my good bone
china, on the far side from me. Sometimes they'd just talk to each other,
act like I wasn't even there. Then one of them would pretend to notice me -
oh - it's the Earth guy - and we'd all start talking. This went on every
night. I began to think there was something provocative about the way they
were doing it. It seemed they were trying to tell me something."
"Do you think they wanted to be eaten?"
"Well, they never said so, not in so many words, no. But I was starting to
get the idea. I mean, if they didn't want to be eaten, what were they doing
on the edge of my plate?"
"What happened then?"
"To put it in a nutshell, one night I got sick of horsing around and just
for the hell of it I speared one of them on the end of my fork and swallowed
it."
"What did the others do?"
"They pretended not to notice. Just went right on with their conversation.
Only their talk was a little stupider with one of them missing. Those guys
need all the brain power they can come up with."
"Let's get back to this Mungulu you swallowed. Did it protest as it was
going down?"
"No, it didn't even blink. It was like it was expecting it. I got the
feeling it was no cruel and unusual punishment for a Mungulu to be
ingested."
"How did they taste?"
"A little like breaded oysters in hot sauce, only subtly different. Alien,
you know."
After the show was over, I noticed a bassinet in a corner of our living room.
Inside was a cute little fellow, looked a little like me. At first I thought it
was little Claude Bayerson, somehow returned. But Rimb soon put me wise.
"That's little Manny," she said. "He's ours."
"Oh," I said. "I don't remember you having him."
"Technically, I haven't. I've delayed the actual delivery until a more
convenient time," she told me.
"Can you do that?"
She nodded. "We of the Ghottich persuasion are able to do that."
"What do you call him?" I asked.
"His name is Manny," Rimb said.
"Is 'Manny' a typical name from your planet?"