"James Tiptree Jr. -10000 Light Years From Home" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

They watched Vivyan’s tall figure moving aimlessly along the terrace, glancing in the water. Seen
from behind he looked older, stooped under the striking black hair.
“The spacers were with us, did you know that?” The woman was suddenly animated. “Oh yes, even
the officers. When the cruiser from Atlixco showed up they all came in.” She grimaced. “Three days
before, we intercepted a Space Command signal about indoctrination to combat, quotes, apathy....
Empires grow old and foolish, even the revolt on Horl didn’t wake them up. We’ll have Horl next.”
She checked herself then. They saw Vivyan glance round quickly and turn toward the wall.
“We found him wandering, afterwards,” the woman went on quietly. “Cancoxtlan’s brother, after
all... he never understood what he’d done. We think now he was basically retarded, in addition to the
conditioning they’d put him through. Nothing reached. You’ve heard of idiot savants? He’s very gentle
and that smile, one doesn’t realize.”
The newsman remembered his own gut response to the gentle stranger and shuddered. Exquisite
tool of empire. A deadly child.
Vivyan had halted before a peculiar carving in an alcove. The newsman frowned. A Terran eagle,
here? The boy-man seemed to be whispering to it.
“He carved it himself. Cox let him keep it. What does it matter now?” The woman bowed her bleak
head. “Listen.”
By a trick in the wall structure the newsman could hear perfectly what Vivyan was whispering.
“...he says his name is Keller of Outplanet News. He didn’t tell his first name. He says he came from
Aldebaran Sector on the Komarov to interview the traitor Prince Cancoxtlan. He is about one meter
eighty, medium build, gray hair and eyes. He has a scar on his right ear lobe and his timer is forty-five
units ahead of planet time...”



MAMMA COME HOME
The day Papa came home was the day my mama came home to me. That’s the way I look at
Earth’s first alien contact. We may have changed some of our ideas about what’s human, but one thing
hasn’t changed; the big history-tape events are still just background for the real I-Me-You drama. Not
true? So, wasn’t the U.S.-Sino-Soviet pact signed the week your daughter got married?
 Anyway, there they were, sitting on Luna. Although it’s not generally known, there’d been a flap
about a moving source around Pluto the year before. That’s when C.I.A. decided that outer space fell
under the category of foreign territory in its job description—at least to the extent of not leaving the Joint
Chiefs in total control of contact possible with the galaxy. So our little shop shared some of the electronic
excitement. The Russians helped, they’re the acknowledged champs at heaving up the tonnage, but we
still have the communications lead—we try harder. The British and the Aussies try too, but we keep
hiring their best men.
That first signal faded to nothing—until one fine April, evening all our communications went bust and
the full moon rose with this big alien hull parked on the Lunar Alps. Sat there for three days, glowing
bluishly in any six-power lens—if you could buy one. And you’ll recall, we had no manned moon-station
then. After peace broke out nobody wanted to spend cash on vacuum and rocks. The shape our space
program was in, we couldn’t have hit them with a paper-clip in less than three months.
On A-Day plus one I spotted Tillie at the watercooler.
To do so I had to see through two doors and Mrs. Peabody, my secretary, but I’d got pretty good
at this. I wandered out casually and said:
“How’s George doing?”
She gave me a one-eyed scowl through her droopy wing of hair, finished her water and scowled
again to make sure she wasn’t smiling.
“He came back after midnight. He’s had six peanut-butter sandwiches. I think he’s getting it.”
There are people who’ll tell you Tillie is an old bag of bones in a seersucker suit. For sure she had