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

"I still say they're publicity-hunting crooks!" yelled Connaught, waving his copy of the rule book at Wambach.
"Bunk!" bellowed Laird. "He's just sore because we can think up more stunts than he can. He started it, with his web-fingered woman." -
"Damn your complaints!" screamed Wambach. "Damn your sea lions! Damn your papers! Damn your mermaids! Damn your webfingered women! Damn your swimming clubs! Damn all of you! I'm going mad! You hear? Mad, mad, mad! One more word out of either of you and I'll have you suspended from the Union!"
"Ow, ow, ow!" barked Alice.
Iantha had finished her fish. She started to pull the bathing suit down again; changed her mind, pulled it off over her head, rolled it up, and threw it across the pool. Halfway across it unfolded and floated down onto the water. The mermaid then cleared her throat, took a deep breath, and, in a clear ringing soprano, launched into the heart-wrenching strains of:
"Rhein gold! Reines Gold, Wie lauter und hell Leuchtest hold du uns! tim dich, du kiares-"

"lantha!"
"What is it, Markee?" she giggled.
"I said, it's getting time to go home!"
"Oh, but I do not want to go home. I am having much fun.

"Nun wir klagen!
Gebt uris das Gold-"

"No, really, Iantha, we've got to go." He laid a hand on her shoulder. The touch made his blood tingle. At the same time, it was plain that the remains of lantha's carefully husbanded sobriety had gone. That last race in fresh water - had been like three oversized Manhattans. Through Vining's head ran a paraphrase of an old song:

"What shall we do with a drunken mermaid
At three o'clock in the morning?"

"Oh, Markee, always you are so serious when people are 'aving fun. But if you say please I will come."
"Very well, please come. Here, put your arm around my neck, and I'll carry you to your chair."
Such, indeed was Mark Vining's intention. He got one hand around her waist and another under her tail. Then he tried to straighten up. He had forgotten that lantha's tail was a good deal heavier than it looked. In fact, that long and powerful structure of bone, muscle, and cartilage ran the mermaid's total weight up to the surprising figure of over two hundred and fifty pounds. The result of his attempt was to send himself and his burden headlong into the pool. To the spectators it looked as though he had picked Iantha up and then deliberately dived in with her.
He came up and shook the water out of his head. lantha popped up in front of him.
"So!" she gurgled. "You are 'aving fun with lantha! I think you are serious, but you want to play games! All right, I show you!" She
brought her palm down smartly, filling Vining's mouth and nose with water. He struck out blindly for the edge of.the pool. He was a powerful swimmer, but his street clothes hampered him. Another splash cascaded over his luckless head. He got his eyes clear in time to see Iantha's head go down and her flukes up.
"Markeeee!" The voice was behind him. He turned, and saw Lantha holding a large black block of soft rubber. This object was a plaything for users of the Hotel Creston's pool, and it had been left lying on the bottom during the meet.
"Catch!" cried Iantha gaily, and let drive. The block took Vining neatly between the eyes.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on the wet concrete. He sat up and sneezed. His head seemed to be full of ammonia. Louis Connaught put away the smelling-salts bottle, and Laird shoved a glass containing a snort of whiskey at him. Beside him was lantha, sitting on her curled tail. She was actually crying.
"Oh, Markee, you are not dead? You are all right? Oh, I am so sorry! I did not mean to 'it you."
"I'm all right, I guess," he said thickly. "Just an accident. Don't worry."
"Oh, I am so glad!" She grabbed his neck and gave it a hug that made its vertebrae creak alarmingly.
"Now," he said, "if I could dry out my clothes. Louie, could you- "Sure," said Connaught, helping him up. "We'll put your clothes
on the radiator in the men's shower room, and I can lend you a pair of pants and a sweatshirt while they're drying."
When Vining came out in his borrowed garments, he had to push his way through the throng that crowded the starting end of the pool room. He was relieved to note that Alice had disappeared. In the crowd, lantha was holding court in her wheel chair. In front of her stood a large man in a dinner jacket and a black cloak, with his back to the pooi.
"Permit me," he was saying. "I am Joseph Clement. Under my management, nothing you wished in the way of a dramatic or musical career would be beyond you. I heard you sing, and I know that with but little training, even the doors of the Metropolitan would fly open at your approach."
"No, Mr. Clement. It would be nice, but tomorrow I 'ave to leave for 'ome." She giggled.
"But my dear Miss Delfoiros-where is your home, if I may presume to ask?"
"Cyprus."
"Cyprus? Hm-m-m-let's see, where's that?"
"You do not know where Cyprus is? You are not a nice man. I do not like you. Go away."
"Oh, but my dear, dear Miss Del-"
"Go away, I said. Scram."
"But-"
lantha's tail came up and lashed out, catching the cloaked man in the solar plexus.
Little Miss Havranek looked at her teammate Miss Tufts, as she prepared to make her third rescue of the evening. "Poisonally," she said, "I am getting damn sick of pulling dopes out of this pool."

The sky was just turning gray the next morning when Laird drove his huge old limousine out into the driveway of his house in the Bronx. The wind was driving a heavy rain almost horizontally.
He got out and helped Vining carry lantha into the car. Vining got in the back with the mermaid. He spoke into the voice tube:
"Jones Beach, Chauncey."