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Автор Edmund Cooper
Edmund Cooper
THE OVERMAN CULTURE
Mr. and Mrs. Faraday had a nice little house in Buckingham Palace Road, London. They had a nice little rose garden and a nice little pond which contained goldfish. They had color television and wireless; and they watched the American expedition touch down on Mars, and they listened to Mr. Henry Hall’s dance band music. Their house had a nice bay window, where two potted aspidistras flourished, and through which Mr. and Mrs. Faraday sometimes glimpsed Queen Victoria riding in her hovercar or Sir Winston Churchill strolling to the Palace.
They had nice furniture, a tape recorder, a box camera, an electronic cooker and two splendid bicycles. They sometimes went to the pictures on Saturday evening, and they listened to the war news every day.
And they had a little boy called Michael. This is his story. This is how he grew up and eventually discovered the truth.
But when he saw the bodies, chilled beyond death, beyond life, as they had existed throughout the limbo of millennia; and when he heard the voice say THIS IS MANKIND, he found the truth almost too terrible to bear…
1
Michael had a good memory. He remembered things significant and insignificant. He remembered—if hazily—when he was young enough to be fed milk only. He remembered the odd child who disappeared from play school, and he remembered the other child who fell (or was pushed?) from the high window and lay all smashed and crumpled on the ground, but not bleeding. And he remembered how he had wanted to know about words, how you could keep them, how you could fix them—perhaps like a drawing—forever.
He remembered nightmares and fantasies and a growing sense of oddness. He remembered when he first began to hope that people would hurt themselves a little so that he could see if they would bleed. He remembered the questions that did not seem to be properly answered. He remembered that Mother and Father had never ever raised their voices. He remembered his first walk by the river Thames, his first visit to the cinema, his first knowledge of air raids. He remembered when desire first stirred in his flesh, and when he began to love Emily Bronte.
Sometimes he thought he was mad. Sometimes he thought he was sane. Then he began to think he could be both sane and mad…. .
It had always been Mother who gave him milk from the bottle. He was sure of that. Always Mother. Always the same kind of smile. Sometimes, particularly when he was tired, drifting in the twilight between waking and sleeping, he could see her face now as it must have seemed then—vast, calm, pleasant, filling half the world.
Mother had always been calm, Mother always was calm, Mother always would be calm. And, for reasons that he could not understand, that, too, seemed terrible.
Father was different. Father was a bit abrupt—stern, even. He always had been, always would be.
