"Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 5 - Flinx in Flux" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

longer he studied her injuries, the more convinced he became that they were not
the result of an accident. Her attire was proof enough that she was no
backcountry veteran. He could see her offering a ride to some traveler in
distress, only to end up mugged, beaten, and left for dead in the middle of the
river. An unpleasant picture with the smell of truth about it. If she had met
with foul play of some kind, it would explain everything.
Except why even a thief would want to beat her half to death. A pro would have
simply knocked her out, tossed her overboard, and taken her goods, leaving it to
the river and the jungle to clean up after him. Not that he was any judge of
criminal ethics. His own criminal ethics, when he had been engaged in petty
thievery as a youngster, had been radically different from most. He studied her
in the rearview. Her bruises were not distributed at random. They suggested
professional work of an unsavory nature.
He grunted. What did he know about it? It could have been anything from a simple
slip on a railing to a lovers' quarrel. He was hypothesizing on air.
The crawler slid into the river, the buoyancy compensators humming to life as
the treads expanded to function as paddles. He had opted for the durability and
longevity of the crawler, but as he studied his damaged passenger, he found
himself wishing be had rented a skimmer despite the delay it would have
entailed.
It took three days of traveling with the current before the river bent to reveal
the floating docks of Mimmisompo. Not once had his passenger opened her eyes,
though she had moaned in her sleep. It did not make him uncomfortable to listen
to her disjointed mumbling, because he was concentrating on her emotional
subconscious. As expected, it was an incoherent jumble, alternating between
pleasure and pain depending largely on how recently he had dosed her. The
ampoules were keeping her alive, though, and her body was slowing repairing
itself.
When he docked in Mimmisompo, he turned in the crawler and called for a robocab.
It delivered them to the modest hotel where he had stayed on arrival two weeks
ago. The manager coded his room without questions. He was glued to the tridee
and did not even look up when Flinx returned with the limp woman in his arms. In
Mimmisompo plenty of people came and went from their rooms in that state.
The lift carried them to the third and top floor of the hotel. Flinx passed the
charged bar across the center of the door, then waited while it read the code
and clicked open. Pip and Scrap entered first, Flinx following. He kicked the
door shut behind him.
Marveling at her litheness, he placed her gently on one of the two beds. After
checking her vital signs, he treated himself to his first shower in days. When
he reentered the bedroom, it was to find her sleeping as soundly as she had in
the crawler.
This morning he had used the last of the crawler's emergency supplies. Tomorrow
he would find her friends or, failing that, a physician. She lay still on the
bed, barely illuminated by the moonlight pouring through the single large window
on her left. Above her headboard the electronic bug repeller glowed emerald,
ready to dissuade any intruder that managed to make it past the hotel's exterior
defenses‑
Flinx checked his own before tossing his towel aside and sliding gratefully
beneath clean, cool sheets. The room was Spartan but spacious, dry, and