"Mike Resnick & David Gerrold - Jellyfish" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

wanted things from him—attention, time, money, sometimes even what little
was left of his soul. Not wanting to give up any of those things—he simply
didn’t answer the door. If he didn’t want to be interrupted, he had the right to
choose not to be.

The sound repeated and there was something imperative about it.

Dillon K. Filk made his own sound now, one of annoyance and
frustration. He pushed himself up off the bed, causing the ancient springs
to squeal their own annoyance and relief. Then he padded barefoot to the
door and opened it suspiciously.

He peered out of the narrow crack between the door and the jam.

He saw a small brown man. The man had brown eyes, brown skin,
and wore a brown suit. He had brown hair and a brown hat. The ring on his
brown finger had a brown birthstone.

“Dillon K. Filk?” he asked.

“Who wants to know?”
 “My name. Is Brown. Small Brown.”

Of course.

Small Brown held up an ID card in a leather folder. It had a brown
picture on it. It looked very official. But the type was too small for him to
read.

Filk blinked from the card to the man. They had found him again.

What Small Brown saw was a grizzled old her-mit, forty-six years old,
with a six-day growth of gray beard, an unkempt frazzle of thin graying hair,
small beady unfocused eyes, a possibly blue sweatshirt, a sagging pair of
shorts, and two skin-ny hairy legs ending in two ugly dirty feet tipped off by
ten very frightening yellow and black toe-nails. He smelled of unwashed
decay.

“Mr. Filk, may I come in?”

“No. I’m working.”

“I’m here. On behalf. Of the. Tryllifandillorians.” Brown pronounced
the words as if he were unfamiliar with the task of using a larynx and a
tongue to cause air to vibrate in a precise pattern of sound. He was
particularly uncomfortable with the last word of his speech.

Filk blinked again.

“The Tryllifandillorians?”