"S. P. Somtow - Absent Thee From Felicity Awhile.." - читать интересную книгу автора (Somtow S. P)

full house. The aliens came; Sir Francis seemed considerably
distressed that he had been so easily upstaged. I walked home, past
the overturned cars and the gigantic parking meters that had
materialized out of nowhere.
As I fell asleep, just before midnight, a thought surfaced: we
were supposed to have two free hours every morning, weren’t we?
For months now, I had slept through those two hours.
I resolved to force myself to wake up at six.




3

I jerked myself awake at 6:30, snaked into unostentatious
jeans and a T-shirt, and came down.
The brilliant summer morning hit me between the eyes. It had
been autumn the previous night. Everything was to wonder at: the
trash drifting down the sidewalk in the breeze, the briskness of the
air, the clarity of the sunlight…
Two tramps were leaning against the first of the alien poles.
They had their eyes closed and were very peaceful, so I crept away.
Portholes exuded smoke, people jostled each other, and everything
seemed astonishingly normal, except for the insistent buzzing.
Another of the poles had a man in a scruffy three-piece suit
and blatantly orange tie, holding up a sign on which was scrawled
VON DANIKEN LIVES! He had acquired a squalid-looking
collection of onlookers, whom I joined for a moment.
“… man, these critters built the Pyramids! They built the
Empire State Building! They’re the Gods! Alexander the Great was
one! Richard M. Nixon was one! God was one!… and you, too, can
be saved, if only you’ll just throw a quarter on the altar of
repentance! Hallelujah! Thank you, ma’am…”
I walked on.
At the next extraterrestrial parking meter a group of Hare
Krishna types was dancing round and round like they had a
missionary in the pot. In the middle a scrawny, bespectacled shaven
man was caressing the shaft, which was glowing a dull crimson. He
seemed transfigured, almost beautiful, much more like the real
thing than Sir Francis FitzHenry could ever be. I watched for a
long time, fascinated, my mind dulled by the hypnotic
repetitiveness of their chanting.
They ceased, jolting me from my reverie. The lanky one came
up to me and started to whisper confidentially, intensely. “Did you
know they’re only a few microns thick? Did you know that they’re
called the T’ tat? Did you know they have a shared consciousness
that works over vast reaches of space-time? Did you know they’ve
reached an incredibly high evolutionary phase, huh?”
“You don’t talk like a Hare Krishna person.”
“Hey!… oh, the clothes, you mean. Actually, I have a Ph.D.