"Michael Kandel - Strange Invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kandel Michael)

 "What harm does this visiting cause?"
The screen presented a scene (in vivid color, though my set was black-and-white) of another planet.
You could tell it was another planet because of the trees, which looked something like cactuses and
something like asparaguses. The houses among the trees were golden stucco with expansive, sombrero
roofs, giving the impression of a warm climate.
The people, human in appearance, mostly lay about. I saw no one working. No collective effort of
any kind, not even for diversion (like card-playing). The scene shifted a little and closed in on two forms
recumbent on a hill. One man had his elbows out and hands beneath his neck, gazing at the clouds. The
other, a few feet away, parallel to him, was a corpse —so badly decayed that in places the skeleton
gleamed white in the sun.
Then the camera went up and down the streets of a town, revealing, besides prodigious quantities of
garbage, other examples of how these people failed to bury their dead. Hyena-type animals fed in the
alleys; vulture-type birds were perched lethargically on the fences and gates.
There were a few old people, using canes as they walked, but not a child in sight. There were no
couples. No pets. The large buildings—probably schools, hospitals, offices—were all unoccupied, and
none of the vehicles were in operation. A caption ran along the bottom of the screen:

The Öht were here ten sidereal years ago.

I phoned Lucille again. "The hallucination is not only amazingly sustained," I said, "but instead of
trying to scare me, it seems to be setting up one of those only-you-can-save-the-world stories. Do you
think I've finally gone bonkers?"
"I wouldn't worry about going bonkers," said Lucille patiently, even though this was the third call in
five minutes. "It's like fainting—some do and some don't. I can't say I understand what you're
experiencing, Wally, but I don't believe you're in any danger."
"He's not," agreed my watch. "Not, at least, from us."
"Who's that?" Lucille asked.
I got sudden gooseflesh.
"You mean—Lucille, you heard it too?"
Lucille answered slowly. "Wally, are you telling me that something talked that shouldn't?"
"Hello, Lucille," said the watch.
"That's a watch talking?" Lucille asked.
"Yes, mine. That is, it's the people from, outer space speaking through the watch. Are you there,
Lucille?"
There was silence on her end.
"Perhaps someone's playing a trick on you," she said at last. But of course she knew that that could
not be the case. I was alone—no friends, no enemies. Mr. Tribovich was my only acquaintance,
inasmuch as I had been institutionalized from the age of ten, when the problem started, and was released
less than a month ago.
The television said, loud, in the voice of the president of the United States: "Whether or not you can
save your world, Mr. Griffith, is open to question. The odds, actually, are against it. Only one in ten
guardians, at best, in this corner of the galaxy, manages to keep the Öht out."
"Wally," said Lucille, "I think I'd better come over."
"You're hearing it too, Lucille?"
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes, a half hour, depending on the traffic." She hung up.
"Your sanity, though you maintain an understandable skepticism toward it," the president continued,
"is all the more stable for having been so severely and repeatedly assaulted."
A sketch on my desk doodle pad caught my eye. Animated: another special effect. Depicted was a
clown on a tightrope, holding his umbrella out at this angle, that angle, while his polka-dotted body
twisted to avoid the fruit thrown at him.