"Samuel R. Delany - Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

тАЬHey, Maud-!тАЭ

тАЬYou can do whatever you want with it.тАЭ

The bar was crowded enough so that to move quickly was to make enemies. I donтАЩt knowтАФI lost her
and made enemies. Some weird characters there: with greasy hair that hung in spikes, and three of them
had dragons tattooed on their scrawny shoulders, still another with an eye patch, and yet another raked
nails black with pitch at my cheek (weтАЩre two minutes into a vicious free-for-all, case you missed the
transition. I did) and some of the women were screaming. I hit and ducked, and then tenor of the
brouhaha changed. Somebody sang, тАЬJasper!тАЭ the way she is supposed to be sung. And it meant the heat
(the ordinary, bungling Regular Service I had been eluding these seven years) were on their way. The
brawl spilled into the street. I got between two nasty-grimies who were doing things appropriate with one
another, but made the edge of the crowd with no more wounds than could be racked up to shaving. The
fight had broken into sections. I left one and ran into another that, I realized a moment later, was merely a
ring of people standing around somebody who had apparently gotten really messed.

Someone was holding people back.

Somebody else was turning him over.

Curled up in a puddle of blood was the little guy I hadnтАЩt seen in two years who used to be so good at
getting rid of things not mine.

Trying not to hit people with my briefcase, I ducked between the hub and the bub. When I saw my first
ordinary policeman I tried very hard to look like somebody who had just stepped up to see what the
rumpus was.

It worked.

I turned down Ninth Avenue, and got three steps into an inconspicuous but rapid lopeтАФ

тАЬHey, wait! Wait up thereтАжтАЭ

I recognized the voice (after two years, coming at me just like that, I recognized it) but kept going.

тАШWait! ItтАЩs me, Hawk!тАЬ

And I stopped.

You havenтАЩt heard his name before in this story; Maud mentioned the Hawk, who is a multi-millionaire
racketeer basing his operations on a part of Mars IтАЩve never been (though he has his claws sunk to the
spurs in illegalities throughout the system) and somebody else entirely.

I took three steps back towards the doorway.

A boyтАЩs laugh there: тАЬOh, man. You look like you just did something you shouldnтАЩt.тАЭ

тАЬHawk?тАЭ I asked the shadow.

He was still the age when two yearsтАЩ absence means an inch or so taller.