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

souvenirs indelibly printed on my memory is the look in the eyes of a man who had just realized that I
stood between him and the only exit. He waited one heartbeat and then started for the exit through what
very nearly became my dead body, in the next few hectic minutes. I saw that look—depthless, limp,
inhuman—in Tillie’s eyes. Gently I disengaged my arm and stepped back. She resumed breathing.
I told myself to leave her alone. It’s an old story. Koestler told it, and his girl was younger. The
trouble was I liked the woman, and it didn’t help that she really was beautiful under those sack suits. We
got close enough a couple of times so we even discussed—briefly—whether anything could be done.
Her view was, of course, nada. At least she had the taste not to suggest being friends. Just nada.
After the second of those sessions I sloped off with a couple of mermaids from the Reflecting Pool,
who turned out to have strange china doorknobs in their apartment. When the doorknobs got busted I
came back to find Mrs. Peabody had put me on sick leave.
“I’m sorry, Max,” Tillie lied.
“De nada,” I told her.
And that was how matters stood when Tillie went off to play with the alien giantesses.
With Tillie next to them, our shop became Miss Government Agency of the moment. The reluctant
trickle of collateral data swelled to a flood. We found out, for instance, about the police rumors.
 It seemed the big girls wanted exercise, and the first thing they asked for in any city was the park.
Since they strolled at eight mph, a foot guard wasn’t practical. The U.N. compromised on a pair of patrol
cars bracketing them on the nearest road. This seemed to amuse the Capellans, and every now and then
the police radios went dead. The main danger to the big girls was from hypothetical snipers, and nobody
could do much about that.
After they went through Berlin the Vapos picked up four men in poor condition in the Tiergarten,
and the one who lived said something about the Capellans. The Vapos didn’t take this seriously—all four
had vagrancy and drug records—but they bucked it along anyway. Next there was some story from a
fruity type in Solsdjk Park near The Hague, and a confused disturbance in Hong Kong when the Girls
went through the Botanical Gardens. And three more defunct vagrants in the wilderness preserve outside
Melbourne. The Capellans found the bodies and expressed shock. Their men, they said, did not fight
among themselves.
Another tidbit was the Great Body Hunt. Try as we had in Mexico we had never got one look at
them completely naked. Breasts, yes—standard human type, superior grade. But below the navel we
failed. Now we found out that everybody else all along the route was failing too, although they’d pushed
the perimeter pretty close. I admired their efforts—you wouldn’t believe what some of our pals had
gotten pickups into. But nothing worked. It seemed the Girls liked privacy, and they had some sort of
routine snooper-sweep that left blank films and tapes. Once when the Jap I.S. got really tricky they found
their gismo with the circuits not only fused but mirror reversed.
Tillie’s penetration evoked a mass howl for anatomical detail. But all she gave us was, “Conception
is a voluntary function with them.”
I wondered if anyone else around the office was hearing mice in the woodwork. Was I the only one
who knew Tillie was under pressures not listed in standard agent evaluation?
But she was helpful on the big question: How did they come to be so human? There was no doubt
they were. Although we hadn’t got pictures, we had enough assorted biological specimens to know they
and we were one flesh. Or rather, one DNA. All the Girls themselves would tell us was interpreted as
“We are an older race“—big smile.
Tillie got us the details that shook our world. The navigator had too many balloon-glasses one night
and told Tillie that Capellans had been here before—long before. Hence the chart notation they’d
wanted to check. There was something of interest here besides a nice planet—something the first
expedition had left. A colony? The navigator grinned and shut up.
This tidbit really put the strawberries in the fan. Was it possible we were the descendants of these
people? Vertigo hit the scientific sector and started a babble of protest. What about Proconsul? What
about the australopithecines? What about gorilla blood-types? What about—about—about WHAT? The