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

"Then I better get started." I leaned back out the door. "Don't disturb me."

Of course as soon as the shadow of the hull fell over the office window I came out in my coveralls, after
giving Sandy five minutes to get it grappled and himself worried. I took the lift up to the one-fifty catwalk.
When I stepped out, Sandy threw me a grateful smile from his scar-ugly face. The golden had already
started his instructions. When I reached them and coughed, the golden turned to me and continued
talking, not bothering to fill me in on what he had said before, figuring Sandy and I would put it together.
You could tell this golden had made his pile. He wore an immaculate blue tunic, with bronze codpiece,
bracelets and earrings. His hair was the same bronze, his skin was burned red black, and his blue-gray
eyes and tight-muscled mouth were proud, proud, proud. While I finished getting instructions, Sandy
quietly got started unwelding the eight-foot seal of the organum so we could get to the checkout circuits.

Finally the golden stopped talkingтАФthat's the only way you could tell he was finishedтАФand leaned his
angular six and a half feet against the railing, clicking his glossy, manicured nails against the pipe a few
times. He had that same sword-length pinky nail, all white against his skin. I climbed out on the rigging to
help Sandy. We had been at work ten minutes when a kid, maybe eighteen or nineteen, barefoot and
brown, black hair hacked off shoulder length, a rag that didn't fit tucked around under his belt, and dirty,
came wandering down the catwalk. His thumbs were hooked under the metal links: golden.

First I thought he'd come from the ship. Then I realized he'd just stalked into the hangar from outside and
come up on the lift.

"Hey, brother!" The kid who was golden hooked his thumbs in his belt, as Sandy and I watched the
dialogue from the rigging on the side of the hull. "I'm getting tired of hanging around this Star-pit. Just
about broke as well. Where you running to?"

The man who was golden clicked his nails again. "Go away, distant cousin."

"Come on, brother, give me a berth on your lifeboat out of this dungheap to someplace worthwhile."

"Go away, or I'll kill you."

"Now, brother, I'm just a youngster adrift in this forsaken quarter of the sky. Come on, nowтАФ"

Suddenly the blond man whirled from the railing, grabbed up a four-foot length of pipe leaning beside
him, and swung it so hard it hissed. The black-haired ragamuffin leapt back and from under his rag
snatched something black that, with a flick of that long nail, grew seven inches of blade. The bar swung
again, caught the shoulder of the boy, then clattered against the hull. He shrieked and came straight
forward. The two bodies locked, turned, fell. A gurgle, and the man's hands slipped from the neck of the
ragamuffin. The boy scrambled back to his feet. Blood bubbled and popped on the hot blade.

A last spasm caught the man; he flipped over, smearing the catwalk, rolled once more, this time under the
rail, and dropped, two hundred and fifty feet to the cement flooring.

Flick. Off went the power in the knife. The golden wiped powdered blood on his thigh, spat over the rail
and said softly, "No relative of mine." Flick. The blade itself disappeared. He started down the catwalk.

"Hey!" Sandy called, when he got his voice back up into his throat, "what about ... I mean you . . . well,
your ship!" There are no familial inheritance laws among goldenтАФonly rights of plunder.
The golden glanced back. "I give it to you," he sneered. His shoulder must have been killing him, but he