"Simon R. Green - Drinking Midnight Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

'Right. So: it's put a bag over its head and do it for the money, one more time. Write
interesting comments to accompany the hundreds of glossy colour photos that are the real
selling point. I mean, there just aren't that many ways to say We don't know what it is either,
or what might be causing it, but isn 't it pretty? And/or impressive? Heaven forfend we might
even hint that we wouldn't be at all surprised if it turned out to be nothing more than half a
dozen pissheads with planks on their feet, shuffling about in the corn in the early hours of the
morning, going, Hee hee, I'm a Martian. God, The X-Files has a lot to answer for . . .'
'Oh, I like that Gillian Anderson,' said Cragg immediately. 'You've got to admire a woman
who can spout reams of scientific dialogue every week, and still make it sound as though
she's talking dirty.'
'True,' said Grant. 'And it has to be said, if it wasn't for unauthorised X-Files tie-ins, I
wouldn't be able to pay the rent some months. But crop circles have to be a new low, even for
me. You can't just say, Look at the pretty pictures, you have to talk knowledgeably about
UFO landings and wind vortices, and how there are always these strange molecular changes
in the ffattened corn ... I swear, much more of this and my brains are going to start dribbling
out of my ears . . .'
'It's your own fault,' Cragg said unfeelingly. 'They only hire you because you can make it
sound convincing, no matter what crap you're writing about this week. Do you believe any of
it?'
'Hell no! I might be an old hippy, but the only time I ever saw a UFO was when I scored
some dodgy blotting paper in London, back in the seventies. There are no UFOs, no ghosts
and no secret conspiracies. And I should know because I've written about all of them, at one
time or another.' He smiled suddenly, and brightened up a little. 'Hey; I had a great idea for a
new Crow film the other day! Princess Diana comes back from the dead, with an Uzi in each
hand, and hunts down French paparazzi! Easy enough to find a good lookalike and put her in
The Crow make-up . . . You're looking at me strangely again.'
The arty set started talking determinedly about the hippy commune that'd recently taken
over the old Manor Farm on the edge of town. There were supposed to be a dozen of them,
six men and six women, but so far they'd outraged local gossip by keeping themselves
strictly to themselves. They'd come down from some dark corner of London, according to a
girl who worked at the estate agents' who handled the sale, looking for peace and quiet and
inner calm. Leo quietly wished them the best of luck in a town like Bradford-on-Avon,
where the barriers between fact and fantasy had been rubbed a little thinner than most
people were comfortable with.
What made the hippies so fascinating was that all details of the purchase of Manor Farm
had been handled strictly by post. Not even a telephone call had been made. The commune
had arrived en masse one morning, rumbling through the town in a converted double-decker
London bus, and had settled into their new home without any help from anyone. And no one
had seen hide nor hair of them since. The few things they needed were ordered by mail, and
delivered by curious locals who found the money waiting for them on the doorstep. All the
farmhouse's windows had been boarded over, and there was neither sight nor sound anywhere
of the new occupants. There were rumours of drugs and orgies and dancing naked in the
moonlight, but no one knew anything for sure.
'Hippies should have stayed in the sixties, where they belonged,' said Grant, pushing his
empty coffee cup forward, in the hope that some kind soul might offer to refill it for him.
'Back with Love and Peace and Flower Power. It all seemed to make some kind of sense at
the time. These days we're all too cynical to believe in Brotherhood and "make love, not
war". Great music, though. There's never been any really good music since the Beatles split
up.'
'Oh come on,' Leo said automatically. 'There's more kinds of popular music now than