"Dickson, Gordon - Dragon And The George Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"Sorry!" boomed Jim. He was still not used to his dragon-voice and the apology came out like the ex- plosion of a signal cannon.

But apparently Smrgol was not offended.

"That's all right, that's all right. No harm done," he thundered back. "Sit down here, lad." He leaned over to rear in the ear of the dragon next to him. "Make room for my grand-nephew, here."

"What? Oh, it's you, Smrgol!" bellowed the other dragon, turning his head to look. He shifted over about eight feet. "All right, Gorbash, squeeze in. We're just getting down to discussion on the george, now."

Jim pushed his way between the two of them, sat down and began to try to make sense of what was go- ing on around him. Apparently the dragons in this world all spoke modem English... Or did they? Now that he listened closely to the verbal tumult around him, the words that his ear was hearing seemed to dis- agree with the sense that his mind was making out of it. Maybe he was talking "dragon" and didn't know it? He decided to file that question for examination at a more leisurely moment.

He looked about. The great sculptured cave in which he found himself had seemed at first to be aswarm with literally thousands of dragons. On closer look, the idea of thousands gave way to hundreds, and this in turn resolved itself to a saner estimate of per- haps fifty dragons of all sizes. Size-wise, Jim was pleased to note, he was not among the smallest there. In fact, no dragon close to him at the moment, with the single exception of Smrgol, could compare to him in size. There was, however, a monster across the room, one of those who seemed to be doing most of the talking, gesturing now and then to a box-like shape of about dragon size, placed beside him on the stone floor and covered with a richly worked piece of tapestry that looked far beyond the capability of dragon claws to produce.

As for the discussion-verbal brawl was perhaps a better description of it. A discussion among dragons appeared to consist of all of them talking at once. Their voices were tremendous in volume and the stone walls and ceiling seemed to shiver under the reso- nances of the titanic bellowing. Smrgol lost no time in getting into it.

"Shut up, you-Bryagh!" he exploded at the over- size dragon beside the tapestry-covered object. "Let someone get a word in edgewise who's had more ex- perience with georges and the rest of the upper world than everyone else of you put together. When I slew the ogre of Gormely Keep there wasn't a dragon here that was out of the shell yet."

"Do we have to listen to your battle with that ogre one more time?" roared the oversize Bryagh. "This is important!"

"Listen, you inchworm!" Smrgol thundered. "It takes brains to beat an ogre-something you haven't got. Brains run in my family. If another ogre cropped up nowadays, me and Gorbash here'd be the only two tails seen above ground for the next eighty years!"

The argument between the two gradually domi- nated the lesser bellowings that were going on. One by one, Jim noticed, the other dragons shut up and sat back to listen, until only his grand-uncle and Bryagh were left shouting at each other.

"... Well, what do you want to do about it, then?" Bryagh was demanding. "I caught it right above the main cave entrance. It's a spy, that's what it is."

"Spy? What makes you think it's a spy? Georges don't go spying on dragons, they come looking for a fight. Fought a good many in my time that way." Smrgol expanded his chest.

"Fight!" sneered Bryagh. "Ever hear of a george nowadays out to fight without its shell? Ever since the first george we've known, when they were looking for a fight they had their shells on. This one was practi- cally peeled!"

Smrgol winked ponderously at the dragons near him.

"Sure you didn't peel it yourself?" he boomed.

"Does it look like it? Look!"

And, reaching down, Bryagh twitched off the tapes- try from the box-like shape, revealing an iron cage. In the cage, crouching miserably behind its rough bars, was-

"ANGIE!" Jim cried.

He had forgotten the tremendous capabilities of the dragon-voice. Or, rather, he had not yet had a real chance to test them out. He had instinctively called Angie's name at the top of his lungs, and a shout at the top of a dragon's lungs was something to hear- provided you had earplugs and were safely over the horizon.

Even that oversize assembly in the cave was shaken. As for Angie, she was either blasted flat on her back or fainted.

Gorbash's grand-uncle was the first to recover from the shock.

"Blast it, boy!" he bellowed, in what Jim now un- happily realized were normal dragon conversational tones, "you don't have to burst our eardrums! What do you mean-'hanchee'?"

Jim had been thinking fast.

"I sneezed," he said.