"Thomas A. Easton - Movers and Shakers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

peeping tom. You shoplift, cheat on your taxes, and chisel more welfare than you deserve. You are also
thirty-eight years old. I checked you out."

Speaking of peeping! And all I knew was that he was an ugly, nosy snob. I didn't like him much. "So
what do you want?"

"I am a scholar. An experimental scholar. It is my calling to study primitive planets such as this one, to
determine the quantal bits in their folklore and to cause the natives to act them out. I then record the
results and publish them as holo films on my home world of Calaz. They are quite popular."

I didn't understand more than one word in three, but I got the idea. He was a meddler, like the
anthrowhatevers who poke around the jungle gooks right here on Earth. He made money out of it too.
Well, as long as a little of it rubbed off on me, he could study me all he wanted. "So where do I come
in?" I said.

"These quantal bits -- I have determined them already for your culture." A ripple ran through the boneless
arms on one side of his body -- his equivalent of a shrug? -- and a slit opened in his skin. He reached in
and pulled out what looked like a small sheet of paper. He held it up in front of his eyes and read aloud
from it: "Penny pincher. Food for thought. Rubble rouser. Father knows best. Movers and shakers." He
tucked the paper away again and went on. "That will do for a sample, yes. The last is you."

"Movers and shakers? You're going to make a mover and shaker out of me?" Fat chance! Like I said at
the beginning, I'm no great shakes, and I know it. He'd have a better chance of making a silk purse out of
a pig's ear.

"Not make one, no. You already are one. A mover because that is how you make your living, yes? And
a Shaker because of your grandmother."

Oh, grandma. She turned Shaker about three years after she qualified as my grandma. Grandpa spent the
next five years splitting his time between raising my mom, earning a living, and trying to convince her to
come home. Then he divorced her and married again. All I could say was, "She makes me a Shaker
too?"

"As much as anyone I could find who was a mover too. But now I must gain your cooperation. It is my
understanding that movers and shakers become political leaders, found large corporations, or make great
fortunes, and I cannot make you do any of those things. I need your help." That shrug again, but this time
no pockets opened. Maybe he just didn't like admitting he couldn't do everything himself. Not that my
help would be worth much. I'd never been able to make a fortune for myself, not that I hadn't wished
hard enough.

I told him as much, adding that this called for a drink. I leaned over and fetched a bottle out from under
the couch. Good booze. The last of a case I'd found squirreled away in a basement I was cleaning out
two weeks ago. "Want any?"

"Ethanol agrees with me. We will drink to our partnership, yes?" I nodded at him and found a couple of
glasses on the windowsill. I poured, and we both knocked the stuff back. He didn't have any more
trouble with it than I did. He wasn't all that alien. He even liked it. His first words on getting the slug
down were, "More, yes?"

I poured again, and we got down to business. He stretched out on be floor, on his back, those fifty-odd