The Aliens [сборник]

"Easy!" repeated the voice. Its-intonation was matter-of-fact. "You got banged up a little last night. I'm looking after you. You'll be all right. Just lie still a little while longer."

"My-eyes!" panted Burt. They felt all right, but they were bandaged! He sweated in apprehension that he had been blinded.

"Don't worry," said the voice, without emotion. "Just hold everything for half an hour and you can get up."

Burt felt himself held fast. Gently, but he couldn't move., He said shakily:

"Who are you?"

"Smith," said the voice. "John Smith. You don't know me. I'm just looking after you until the doctor gets back and says you can get up. I found you last night."

The voice was incredibly familiar. He'd heard it over and over again. He recognized it, absolutely. But he didn't know anybody named John Smith. Certainly not anybody who could talk to him in a voice as familiar to him as his own-Then he did know whose the voice was. He gasped. He knew he was wide awake, but his just-discovered knowledge was as much like a nightmare as anything could possibly be. He wavered precariously between an hysterically violent reaction, and a paralysis of pure horror. This was insanity! He must be insane! He must be!

The completely known voice said:

"Look, Burt! You just promise to lie still here until the doctor comes, and everything'll be all right."

Burt knew that he was deathly white. He felt that way. He lay still, numb with horror. The voice said:

"Okay? You'll do that?"

Burt didn't move or answer. He couldn't. He was stunned by the recognition of the voice. He seemed, probably, to have fainted There was a moments silence and then a readjustment of the bedclothing over him. It tightened. The footsteps went into the next room. And Burt would have done something completely insane if he'd recognized them. But they were not familiar footsteps. The door stayed open. Burt lay absolutely motionless. He, was thinking crazily that this couldn't be, and if it was he was out of his head. Because he knew, now, whose voice it was. It was perfectly reasonable that he shouldn't have recognized it at first. Now he did. But it was impossible!

The voice that had spoken to him was his own.

His own voice had called him Burt. His own voice had told him to. keep still until the doctor came. And then he, using his own voice, had asked questions, and his own voice' in another throat had put him off.

Frozen, he heard small movements in the next room. He stirred with infinite caution-the cunning of the insane, he thought desperately. The cover was tight across his shoulders. When he'd moved, before, something crashed to the floor. One side of the cover was tucked tightly under the mattress. The other must be laid flat on a chair with something heavy on it. When he stirred, that heavy thing would be upset. With infinite, frantic care he moved his right arm side-wise, not loosening the cover at all. He brought his hand up past his shoulder, flat to the mattress, and turned his face to it. He fumbled at the bandage over his eyes and plucked it away. He could see. There was nothing wrong with his eyesight. There were no scratches from broken glass or anything else about his face. He saw the end of the cover resting on the chair beside his bed. It was devised exactly as he'd expected, so that movement which loosened the cover would pull the bucket on -it, and the bucket would fall. It was to give notice when he moved. But it was easy to defeat. A lunatic could defeat it. Burt had merely to loosen the cover at the other side of the bed, where the mattress held it. He did. He was in his pajamas. He had evidently been put carefully to bed while unconscious.

He got up very quietly, though his teeth tended to chatter. There were noises in the room nearest the lake. This John Smith was doing something there. Burt picked up the bucket as a weapon. It should have been an alarm. He wasn't sure why he wanted a weapon, because outside The sun shone and birds sang very peacefully, but Burt was in a precarious psychological state. Somebody had blindfolded him and tried to persuade him he was seriously injured. But it was worse than that! The somebody who'd deceived him about his eyes was using Burt's own voice to lie to him with. And Burt felt a crawling horror at that thought.

But he went very softly to the door and peered into the next room There was a figure seated in a chair at his own worktable. The figure wore one of his shirts, and a pair of his trousers, and his shoes. It was bent over something at which it labored. There were yards and yards of leathery bronze-color stuff-not woven fabric-in a heap at one side of the room. The figure was working with pieces cut out of it.