"Philip Jose Farmer - WOT 5 - The Lavalite World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

The thousand or so plants were still moving but more slowly. They leaned
forward on their rigid legs, their tentacles extended to support them.

Kickaha looked closely at the nearest one and saw about a dozen apple-
red spheres dangling from the branches. He called to Urthona. "Is their fruit
good to eat?"

"For birds, yes," Urthona said. "I don't remember. But I can't think why
I should have made them poisonous for humans."

"Knowing you, I'd say you could have done it for laughs," Kickaha said.

He motioned to Angus McKay to come to him. The black came to him warily,
though his caution was engendered by the tree, not Kickaha.

McKay was an inch shorter than Kickaha but about thirty pounds heavier.
Not much of the additional weight was fat, though. He was dressed in black
levis, socks, and boots. He'd long ago shed his shirt and the leather jacket
of the motorcyclist, but he still carried his helmet. Kickaha had insisted
that it be retained to catch rainwater in, if for nothing else.

McKay was a professional criminal, a product of Detroit who'd come out
to Los Angeles to be one of Urthona's hired killers. Of course, he had not
known then that Urthona was a Lord. He had never been sure what Urthona, whom
he knew as Mr. Callister, did. But he'd been paid well, and if Mr. Callister
wasn't in a business which competed with other mobs, that was all to the good.
And Mr. Callister certainly seemed to know how to handle the police.

That day which seemed so long ago, he'd had a free afternoon. He'd
started drinking in a tavern in Watts. After picking up a good-looking if
loudmouthed woman, he'd driven her to his apartment in Hollywood. They'd gone
to bed almost at once, after which he fell asleep. The telephone woke him up.
It was Callister, excited, obviously in some kind of trouble. Emergency,
though he didn't say what it was. McKay was to come to him at once. He was to
bring his .45 automatic with him.

That helped to sober him up. Mr. Callister must really be in trouble if
he would say openly, over a phone that could be tapped, that he was to be
armed. Then the first of the troubles started. The woman was gone, and with
her his wallet-five hundred dollars and his credit cards-and his car keys.

When he looked out the window into the parking space behind the
building, he saw that the car was gone, too. If it hadn't been that he was
needed so quickly, he would have laughed. Ripped off by a hooker! A dumb one
at that, since he would be tracking her down. He'd get his wallet back and its
contents, if they were still around. And his car, too. He wouldn't kill the
woman, but he would rough her up a bit to teach her a lesson. He was a
professional, and professionals didn't kill except for money or in self-
defense.