"Samuel R. Delany - The Star Pit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

He staggered, went down on his knees still laughing, then collapsed. By the time we reached him, he was
silent. With the toe of his boot Ratlit nudged the hand from the belt buckle.

It flopped, palm up, on the pavement. The little fingernail was three quarters of an inch long, the way a lot
of the golden wear it. (Like his face, the tips of Sandy's fingers are all masticated wrecks. Still, something
. . .)

"Now isn't that something." Ratlit shook his head. 'What do you want to do with him, Vyme?"

"Nothing," I said. "Let him sleep it off."

"Leave him so somebody can come along and steal his belt?" Ratlit grinned. "I'm not that nasty."

"Weren't you just telling me how much you hated golden?"

"I'd be nasty to whoever stole the belt and wore it. Nobody but a golden should be hated that much."

"Ratlit, let's go."

But he had already kneeled down and was shaking the golden's shoulder. "Let's get him to Alegra's and
find out what's the matter with him."

"He's just drunk."

"Nope," Ratlit said. " 'Cause he don't smell funny."

"Look. Get back." I hoisted the golden up and laid him across my neck, fireman's carry. "Start moving," I
told Ratlit. "I think you're crazy."

Ratlit grinned. "Thanks. Maybe he'll be grateful and lay some lepta on me for taking him in off the street."

"You don't know golden," I said. "But if he does, split it with me."

"Sure."

Two blocks later we reached Alegra's place. (But like I say, Sandy, though well built, is little; so I didn't
have much trouble carrying him.) Halfway up the tilting stairs Ratlit said, "She's in a good mood."
"I guess she is." The weight across my shoulders was becoming pleasant.

I can't describe Alegra's place. I can describe a lot of places like it; and I can describe it before she
moved in because I knew a derelict named Drunk-roach who slept on that floor before she did. You
know what never-wear plastics look like when they wear out? What nonrust metals look like when they
rust through? It was a shabby crack-walled cubicle with dirt in the corners and scars on the
win-dowpane when Drunk-roach had his pile of blankets in the corner.

But since the hallucinating projective telepath took it over, who knows what it had become.

Ratlit opened the door on an explosion of classical beauty. "Come in," she said, accompanied by
symphonic arrangement scored on twenty-four staves, with full chorus. "What's that you're carrying,