Captiva

Начало книги

The reason I was awake at four a.m. when the bomb that killed Jimmy Darroux exploded was that my friend Tomlinson and I were on the dock taking turns squinting through a telescope, inviting—or so said Tomlinson—"ocular confirmation" that telepathic messages he believed he had received were, indeed, being transmitted by space creatures.

"It's loaded with them out there," he told me. "Sentient beings? For sure. Real living souls who generate very heavy vibes. They're aware a few of us earthlings are tuned in. Seriously; I shit you not. Couple of weeks ago, I just flashed on it. The whole scene. Trust me. They're definitely out there."

I thought: So are you, Tomlinson. So are you.

But I didn't swing out of bed on a cold January morning in the hope of contacting Tomlinson's deep-space kindred. He's a believer; I'm not. However, one of my journals promised there was an interesting planetary oddity to be seen in the pre-dawn sky. Venus was in apogee and, over the period of a few days, would seem to pass in front of Jupiter. I'm not an astronomer. It's a sometimes hobby. Over the years, I've acquired a working knowledge of the night sky because my poor sense of direction has gotten me lost often enough to know that stars are handy navigational aids—that, plus it makes me uneasy to see something over and over again that can't be identified. Which is why I've learned enough waypost constellations to keep me comfortable. So, as long as Tomlinson was badgering me to break out the telescope, I decided the best time to do it was when there was something interesting to see. Tomlinson could look all he wanted for signals from space. I'd look at Jupiter and Venus.

Читать дальше →