"Eric Frank Russell - The Rhythm of the Rats" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

challenge. Nothing happened.
Continuing their patrol, they went three or four paces, stopped. One of them felt
in his pocket, bent down and appeared to be fumbling around the region of his own
boots. I had my cheek close against the cold glass as I strove to see what he was
doing. A moment later I discovered that he was feeding a small rat which was sitting
on its haunches and taking his offerings in paws shaped like tiny hands.
They walked on. The rat followed, gambolling behind them, its eyes gleaming
fitfully in the moonlight and resembling little red beads. Just as the two men passed
out of my sight several more rats emerged from the undergrowth and ran eagerly in
the same direction.
Sneaking out of the door, I crossed a passage, entered the front room which was
furnished but unoccupied. This room's windows overlooked the cattle-track which
formed the main stem. In due time the two men returned to view, complete with
cudgel and gun. They had the wary bearing of an armed patrol performing a regular
and essential duty. Eight rats, all small and crimson-eyed, followed very close upon
their heels.
As they neared my vantage point a woman came out of the house right opposite,
seated herself on its step and tossed tidbits from a large bag on her lap. Rats
swarmed around her, scuttling gray shapes that came from the shadows and the
darker places.
I could not hear their excited squeaking; the casement was too close-fitting for
that. The woman reached out her hand and petted one or two and they responded by
fawning upon her. If only the light had been stronger I am sure it would have
revealed her formerly pale, wan face now glowing with love… love for the rats.
Daytime surliness, secret fear, a mixed desire and revulsion for the lonely stranger,
night-time affection for rats—what did all these things mean? It was too much for
me. I had nothing in common with isolated mountain folk such as these. Tomorrow,
at all costs, I must get away.
By this time the patrolling men had passed on and the woman was alone with her
rodents. Returning to my own room, I had another look at the path, saw nothing
other than a solitary rat which ran across as if anxious to join its fellows in the
village. The moon was a little higher, its light a little stronger. Dark conifers posed file
on file, a silent army awaiting the order to descend the hill.
I went to bed, lay there full of puzzled, apprehensive thoughts, and—let me
confess it—nervous, uneasy, too restless to sleep. As the night-hours crawled
tediously on and the moonbeams strengthened, the air grew lighter, colder, less
oppressive, more invigorating.
This peculiarity of the atmosphere waxed so greatly that it created a strange
tenseness within me, an inexplicable feeling of expecting something grave and
imminent. So powerful did this sensation become that eventually I found myself
sitting up in bed, cold and jumpy, ears straining for they knew not what, eyes upon
the brilliant window which at any moment might frame a face like none seen before in
this or any other world.
That such pointless but wide-awake anxiety was silly, I knew full well, yet I could
not help it, could not control it. I strove to divert my mind by wondering whether
that woman was still bestowing love upon her rats, and by listening for the passing
footsteps of the patrol. Then, as my eyes remained fixed upon the casement,
something came through as easily as did the moonbeams. One moment there was the
utter silence of a waiting world; the next, it was through the window and in the room
with me.