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

when I had first seen the long ash-blonde hair of Clio Jeanne de Carriol.

There were others with her, of course, and they were the first white-skinned
males I had ever seen, outside of the illustrated books I had found in the
storehouse. But Clio was a woman, and I was twenty, so my eyes were mainly
for her. I did not know nor would have cared that she was the daughter of a
retired college teacher. Nor that he had named his daughter Clio after the Muse
of History. Nor that they were descended from Huguenots who had fled France
after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and established plantations and horse
farms in Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland. All I knew about the world outside a
fifty-mile square area was what I had tried to understand in those books, and
most of that I just could not grasp.

I suppose I was lost in thought for a little more than a minute. Then I turned a
little to the east, because I'd heard a very faint and unidentifiable noise, and I saw
a flash up in a tree about fifty yards away.

I dived into a bush and rolled into a slight depression. The report of the rifle and
the bullet striking about ten feet from me came a second later. Three heavy
machine guns and a number of automatic rifles raked through the bush.
Somebody twenty yards to the north shouted, and a grenade blew up the earth
exactly over the site of the storehouse.

I had to get out, and swiftly, but I could not move without being cut down, the fire
was so heavy.

Leave it to the Nine to do a thorough job.

They had found out that I was flying a plane from Port-Gentil, ostensibly to Sett├й
Cama. They - their agents, rather - had figured that I might be stopping off at the
Parc National du Petit Loango for a sentimental pilgrimage. Actually, my main
purpose was to leave the plane there and set off on foot across the continent to
the mountains in Uganda. It would take me a long time to make the approach to
the secret caves of the Nine, but it was better to travel through the jungle across
the central part of Africa than to fly anywhere near it. In the jungle, I am silent and
unseen, and even the Nine cannot distract me except by accident.

But the Nine had sent that outlaw fighter jet to shoot me out of the sky. And, as a
backup for Death, they had arranged an ambush at my birthplace. When the jet
pilot had reported in, as he surely must have, that I had gone down with my
plane, the Nine had not pulled off their ambushers at once. I suppose they may
have had orders to wait there a week. The Nine always were enthusiastic for
overkill and overcaution, especially when one of their own - a traitor - was to be
taken care of.
Even so, they must have been surprised, they must not have really expected me
to come along so soon after being burned to death or smashed flat against the
ocean and then eaten by sharks. But they had maintained a very good silence.
The wind was blowing from the sea, so I had not heard or smelled them. I think I
caught them by surprise; they may not have been sure that I was the one for
whom they were waiting.