"Connie Willis - All Seated on the Ground" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

ALL SEATED ON THE GROUND
by Connie Willis

Connie Willis first appeared in Asimov’s in 1982 with two award-winning
stories: “Fire Watch” and “A Letter from the Clearys,” and she’s been an
Asimov’s writer (and award winner) ever since, with such stories as “Even
the Queen” (April 1992), “The Last of the Winnebagos” (July 1988), and
“The Winds of Marble Arch” (October/ November 1999). She’s also written
a number of Christmas stories for us, including this one about aliens,
Christmas carols, Victoria’s Secret, and church choirs. She’s an expert on
that last topic, having sung in church choirs, learned all the verses to “While
Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to
Town,” and chaperoned middle-school choirs on more trips to the mall than
she likes to remember. Connie’s most recent collection, The Winds of
Marble Arch and Other Stories, was published by Subterranean Press last
August. She is currently at work on her next novel, All Clear.

****

I’d always said that if and when the aliens actually landed, it would be a
let-down. I mean, after War of the Worlds, Close Encounters, and E.T.,
there was no way they could live up to the image in the public’s mind, good
or bad.

I’d also said that they would look nothing like the aliens of the movies,
and that they would not have come to A) kill us, B) take over our planet and
enslave us, C) save us from ourselves a la The Day the Earth Stood Still,
or D) have sex with Earthwomen. I mean, I realize it’s hard to find someone
nice, but would aliens really come thousands of light-years just to find a
date? Plus, it seemed just as likely they’d be attracted to wart hogs. Or
yucca. Or air-conditioning units.

I’ve also always thought A) and B) were highly unlikely since
imperialist invader types would probably be too busy invading their
next-door neighbors and being invaded by other invader types to have time
to go after an out-of-the-way place like Earth, and as to C), I’m wary of
people or aliens who say they’ve come to save you, as witness Reverend
Thresher. And it seemed to me that aliens who were capable of building the
spaceships necessary to cross all those light-years would necessarily have
complex civilizations and therefore motives for coming more compliated
than merely incinerating Washington or phoning home.

What had never occurred to me was that the aliens would arrive, and
we still wouldn’t know what those motives were after almost nine months of
talking to them.

Now I’m not talking about an arrival where the UFO swoops down in
the Southwest in the middle of nowhere, mutilates a few cows, makes a
crop circle or two, abducts an extremely unreliable and
unintelligent-sounding person, probes them in embarrassing places, and