"de Camp, L Sprague - Nothing in the Rules UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Camp L Sprague)

"It is," grinned Connaught. "It's just a coincidence that they both got the same name."
"You don't expect us to believe that?"
"I don't care whether you believe it or not. It's so. Ain't the sea lion's name Alice Black?" He turned to the little fat man, who nodded.
"Let it pass," moaned Wambach. "We can't take time off to get this animal's birth certificate."
"WTeII, then," said Vining, "how about the regulation suit? Maybe you'd like to try to put a suit on your sea lion?"
"Don't have to. She's got one already. It grows on her. Yah, yah, yah, gotcha that time."
"I suppose," said Wambach, "that you could consider a natural sealskin pelt as equivalent to a bathing suit."
"Sure you could. That's the point. Anyway, the idea of suits is to be modest, and nobody gives a damn about a sea lion's modesty."
Vining made a final point. "You refer to the animal as 'her,' but how do we know it's a female? Even Mr. Wambach wouldn't let you enter a male sea lion in a women's meet."
Wambach spoke: "How do you tell on a sea lion?"
Connaught looked at the little fat man. "Well, maybe we had better not go into that here. How would it be if I put up a ten-dollar bond that Alice is a female, and you checked on her sex later?"
"That seems fair," said Wambach.
Vining and Laird looked at each other. "Shall we let 'em get away with that, Mark?" asked the latter.
Vining rocked on his heels for a few seconds. Then he said, "I think we might as well. Can I see you outside a minute, Herb? You people don't mind holding up the race a couple of minutes more, do you? We'll be right back."
Connaught started to protest about further delay but thought better of it. Laird presently reappeared, looking unwontedly cheerful.
"'Erbert!" said lantha.
"Yes?" he put his head down.
"I'm afraid-"
"You're afraid Alice might bite you in the water? Well, I wouldn't want that-"
"Oh, no, not afraid that way. Alice, poof! If she gets nasty I give her one with the tail. But I am afraid she can swim faster than me."
"Listen, lantha, you just go ahead and swim the best you can. Twelve legs, remember. And don't be surprised, no matter what happens."
"WThat you two saying?" asked Connaught suspiciously.
"None of your business, Louie. Whatcha got in that pail? Fish? I see how you're going to work this. Wanta give up and concede the meet now?"
Connaught merely snorted.
The only competitors in the 3oo-yard free-style race were Iantha
Delfoiros and the sea lion, allegedly named Alice. The normal members of both clubs declared that nothing would induce them to get into the pooi with the animal. Not even the importance of collecting a third-place point would move them.
lantha got into her usual starting position. Beside her, the little round man maneuvered Alice, holding her by an improvised leash made of a length of rope. At the far end, Connaught had placed himself and one of the buckets.
Ritchey fired his gun; the little man slipped the leash and said:
"Go get 'em, Alice!" Connaught took a fish out of his bucket and waved it. But Alice, frightened by the shot, set up a furious barking and stayed where she was. Not till lantha had almost reached the far end of the pool did Alice sight the fish at the other end. Then she slid off and shot down the water like a streak. Those who have seen sea lions merely loafing about a pool in a zoo or acquarium have no conception of how fast they can go when they try. Fast as the mermaid was, the sea lion was faster. She made two bucking jumps out of water before she arrived and oozed out onto the concrete. One gulp and the fish had vanished.
Alice spotted the bucket and tried to get her head into it. Connaught fended her off as best he could with his feet. At the starting end, the little round man had taken a fish out of the other bucket and was waving it, calling: "Here Alice!"
Alice did not get the idea until lantha had finished her second leg. Then she made up for lost time.
The same trouble occurred at the starting end of the pool; Alice failed to see why she should swim twenty-five yards for a fish when there were plenty of them a few feet away. The result was that, at the halfway-mark, lantha was two legs ahead. But then Alice caught on. She caught up with and passed Iantha in the middle of her eighth leg, droozling out of the water at each end long enough to gulp a fish and then speeding down to the other end. In the middle of the tenth leg, she was ten yards ahead of the mermaid.
At that point, Mark Vining appeared through the door, running. In each hand he held a bowl of goldfish by the edge. Behind him came Miss Havranek and Miss Tufts, also of the Knickerbockers, both similarly burdened. The guests of the Hotel Creston had been mildly curious when a dark, severe-looking young man and two girls in bathing suits had dashed into the lobby and made off with the six
bowls. But they had been too well-bred to inquire directly about the rape of the goldfish.
Vining ran down the -side of the pool to a point near the far end. There he extended his arms and inverted the bowls. Water and fish cascaded into the pool. Miss Havranek and Miss Tufts did likewise at other points along the edge of the pool.
Results were immediate. The bowls had been large, and each had contained about six or eight fair-sized goldfish. The forty-odd brightcolored fish, terrified by their rough handling, darted hither and thither about the pool, or at least went as fast as their inefficient build would permit them.
Alice, in the middle of her ninth leg, angled off sharply. Nobody saw her snatch the fish; one second it was there, and the next it was not. Alice doubled with a swirl of flippers and shot diagonally across the pool. Another fish vanished. Forgotten were her master and Louis Connaught and their buckets. This was much more fun. Meanwhile, Iantha finished her race, narrowly avoiding a collision with the sea lion on her last leg.
Connaught hurled the fish he was holding as far as he could. Alice snapped it up and went on hunting. Connaught ran toward the starting platform, yelling: "Foul! Foul! Protest! Protest! Foul! Foul!"
He arrived to find the timekeepers comparing watches on Jantha's swim, Laird and Vining doing a kind of war dance, and Ogden Wambach looking like the March Hare on the twenty-eighth of February.
"Stop!" cried the referee. "Stop, Louie! If you shout like that you'll drive me mad! I'm almost mad now! I know what you're going to say."
"Well . . . well . . . why don't you do something, then? \Vhy don't you tell these crooks where to head in? Why don't you have 'em expelled from the Union? Why don't you-"
"Relax, Louie," said Vining. "We haven't done anything illegal."
"What? Why, you dirty-"
"Easy, easy." Vining looked speculatively at his fist. The little man followed his glance and quieted somewhat. "There's nothing in the rules about putting fish into a pool. Intelligent swimmers, like Miss Delfoiros, know enough to ignore them when they're swimming a race."
"But-what-why you-"
Vining walked off, leaving the two coaches and the referee to fight it out. He looked for lantha. She was sitting on the edge of the pool, paddling in the water with her flukes. Beside her were four feebly flopping goldfish laid out in a row on the tiles. As he approached, she picked one up and put the front end of it in her mouth. There was a flash of pearly teeth and a spasmodic flutter of the fish's tail, and the front half of the fish was gone. The other half followed immediately.
At that instant Alice spotted the three remaining fish. The sea lion had cleaned out the pool and was now slithering around on the concrete, barking and looking for more prey. She gallumped past Vining toward the mermaid.
Jantha saw her coming. The mermaid hoisted her tail out of the water, pivoted where she sat, swung the tail up in a curve, and brought the flukes down on the sea lion's head with a loud spat. Vining, who was twenty feet off, could have sworn he felt the wind of the blow.
Alice gave a squawk of pain and astonishment and slithered away, shaking her head. She darted past Vining again, and for reasons best known to herself hobbled over to the center of argument and bit Ogden Wambach in the leg. The referee screeched and climbed up on Horwitz's table.
"Hey," said the scorekeeper. "You're scattering my papers!"