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you?
 Bugs? Why ever would we do that?
 Well, I thought your antennae made you kind of& I don t know& insectoid.
Ashley gave out a high-pitched squeak of a laugh and said,  Insectoid? The
very idea! He squinted up at his stubby antennae before continuing.  These
don t do anything at all, really as much use and purpose as your eyebrows. No,
of all the many strange and barely related phyla you have on your planet, you
know which body type most closely resembles ours?
 I don t know. Mary shrugged as she looked at Ashley s curious
semitransparent, liquid-filled appearance.  A cross between an amoeba and a
crème brûlée?
 Not even close. I ll tell you: None of them. The closest thing to our
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physiology is seven live jellyfish stuffed inside a balloon designed to fit
only two.
He pinged his cheek with a digit, and the shock waves in his elastic skin
rippled out around his head and back again before he added,
 Intelligentjellyfish, mind you. We ll take my car. Shall we go?
 These old things are a rarity these days, explained Ashley, driving through
the darkened streets at exactly twenty-two miles per hour in his meticulously
restored 1975 Datsun 120A Coupe.  My brother rebuilt it for me.
 You have a brother?
 And a sister, although the concept of gender is a tricky one to understand,
even for us. That reproduction stuff of yours sounds pretty messy. Does the
man really 
 Yes, yes, he does, said Mary quickly.  It s all true.
 And is thatreally a satisfactory method? I ve got a couple of ideas for
improvements, if you want to hear them.
 No, no, please keep them to yourself. It seems to have worked very well for
quite a few years now.
They drove slowly on in silence for a few minutes, while drivers behind them
attempted to pass where they could and honked their horns in annoyance. Mary
consulted the list of ex Dorian Gray car owners and guided Ashley to a very
ordinary-looking street in Tidmarsh.
 Do you want me to come in with you?
 I ll be fine, said Mary, fully aware that some people still couldn t get
their heads around the fact that there reallywere aliens and on occasion would
start screaming uncontrollably sometimes for hours.
 Righto, said Ashley, who generally didn t like people screaming, especially
at him.  I ll sit here and listen to the Delfonics on my eight-track.
Mary climbed out of the car and walked up the garden path of number
sixty-two. Even though Dorian s car had been consigned to the wrecker s yard
almost exactly three years previously, the owners, she reasoned, might still
be living in the same house. They were. Or at least, Mrs. Aldiss was.
 Oh! she said when Mary explained the reason for her visit.
 I m sorry, but I thought I d answered all the questions back then do I have
to go over the whole thing again?
 What questions were those? asked Mary.  After all, it was only about a car
your husband once owned.
 It was more than that, Officer, she replied softly.  It was the one he&
died in.
Mary apologized, and Mrs. Aldiss invited her in for a cup of tea. Her husband
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had been something of a seventies-car nut, too, and the pristine 1976 Austin
Maxi had been too good to resist.
 He was initially very happy with it, said Mrs. Aldiss, staring at the
carpet,  but after a few weeks I think he began to growsuspicious of it.
 In what way?
 It s difficult to say precisely. I used to see him stand outside the house
staring at it. He tried to take it back, but Dorian Gray had vanished.
Mary felt herself shiver.
 He used the car as normal after that, and then one night they found it
crushed on the eastbound lane of the A329. It had been hit by a truck,
apparently, although the other vehicle was never traced. Brian died
instantly. She fell silent and wiped a tear from her eyelash.
 I m sorry to ask you these things, said Mary.  Did you ever drive it
yourself?
 Once. I didn t like it.
 I know the feeling. I have a colleague with an Allegro I have to drive.
 It wasn t that. There was something else. Somethingmalevolent about the
car.
Mary knew what she meant.  The odometer went backward, didn t it?
 Yes, said Mrs. Aldiss quietly,  yes, it did.
 What news? asked Ashley, turning down the volume on  Didn t I (Blow Your
Mind This Time). [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]