"Philip Jose Farmer - The Empire of the Nine omnibus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

twelve hundred foot fall into the ocean and a shark attack should be enough
excitement for a month, anyway, not to mention blowing up two helicopters on
the ground and lobbing a grenade into the port of another in the air. And getting
through the fire-power of thirty-five men and a rocket-carrying, napalm-bomb-
dropping air-craft. I had had enough for some time; surely my luck must be
running out. My anger was getting dangerous, dangerous for me, that is. I could
not afford to lose control. But I was feeling a tiredness very new to me. Those
who have read the volumes by my biographer, or volume IX of my own memoirs,
know that my energy is great. It can be called animal-like. But I had gone through
an experience only two months ago which might be called unmanning. Afterward,
I had had to go into hiding from the Nine with my wife and Doc Caliban and his
cousin, Trish Wilde. I had been without adequate sleep for a week. I wanted to
get back to the rain forest of my childhood and youth, to see the dark ceiling
close over me, to hear the silence and feel the coolness of the green womb.

I crouched under the bush and tried to suppress my trembling. I bit my lips and
clutched the rifle as if I could squeeze in the stock with my fingers. I wanted to
leap up and run toward the enemy with my gun blazing and, when that was
empty, throw my grenades, and when those were gone, close in on them with the
knife.

The images were vivid and satisfying, but they were deadly. I enjoyed them, then
laughed to myself, and some of the shaking went away. I had to get out from the
closing jaws by going north to the mangrove swamp or south through more bush.
Men were already descending from the cliff on both sides and five dogs were
with each column. Their ascent was slow and dangerous, but they were
determined to extend the jaws of the trap. Other men stayed on top of the cliff to
observe. And the dogs were getting closer now; I could hear them plainly
because the chopper had travelled to my south. And then it rose and two objects
fell from it, and the jungle to my right was a hemisphere of flame and a spire of
inky smoke.

The chopper swung back and over me, past me, stopped high above the edge of
the swamp, and two more bombs fell. The mangroves for a stretch of a hundred
yards were burning fiercely.

Their plan was a good one. Of course, they did not know I was surrounded, but
they were acting as if I were. And, as sometimes happens, the as-if hypothesis
was going to bear a theory and then a fact. Unless I managed, like many a hard
fact, to slip through the net of hypothesis.

There was only one thing to do. I crawled toward the left and into the edge of the
smoke cloud. Though I was as close to the ground as I could get, I could not stay
there long without coughing. Nor could I depend on the smoke to conceal me
because of the vagaries of the wind. My purpose was to get where the dogs
coming down from the cliff could not smell me or to get as close as possible to
that area. Also, when I left that area, I would be reeking of smoke, which I hoped
would cover up my body odour.

A man was saying something to a bloodhound, and then they were past me. I