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

had been administered. Her bruises had been evenly dispersed across her body,
suggesting that whoever had handed them out had taken care to prolong her
consciousness for as long as possible. It smacked of sadism, questioning, or
both. He worried about it all the way to Quayside.
The entertainment center was not crowded. It was too early. There were drivers
and cargo lifters, alluvial miners, and one independent rarewood logger whom
Flinx recognized by the specialized trimming equipment dangling from his belt.
Half a dozen men, nearly as many women.
There were also two thranx, looking a lot more at ease than their human
compatriots. Each was chatting with a human instead of with each other. It was
rumored that the thranx preferred the company of human beings to their own kind.
Flinx knew that was talked up by thranx psychologists. Even now, hundreds of
years after the Amalgamation, there were still humans whose insectophobia
required attention and treatment.
He did not look at them twice. Man and thranx had been so close for so long that
they were no longer thought of as aliens. More like short people in shiny suits.
The people in the entertainment center showed little interest in the games and
other diversions Quayside offered. Two men were idly toying with a quick‑draw
shooting game near the back. No one else paid any attention to the horrific and
extraordinarily lifelike monsters that leapt from behind rocks or jumped from
vines or erupted from the ground to attack the two competitors. The illusions
had to be shot in the right spot the correct number of times for a score to
register. Their simulated death throes were exuberantly noisy and dramatic. It
was the nature of the game.


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The fact that each holoed creature actually existed, either on Alaspin or on
another world, added to the game's attraction, though Flinx was not sure a
teacher would have thought of it as educational. He never indulged in the
electronic entertainments. Once he had played one out of deference to a
companion. It had left him cold. Though he was astonishingly proficient, there
was no challenge to it. He credited his skill to good reflexes and never thought
there was any more to it than that.
At the conclusion of the game some joker had repositioned the halo projector so
that a large, carnivorous reptile had dropped down on Flinx from the direction
of the ceiling. The result was just what the practical joker had been hoping
for. Flinx had been startled and frightened.
Unfortunately, that had caused Pip to react defensively. Her highly caustic
venom had burned right through the holo projector's lens, at considerable cost
to the establishment's owner. With Pip hovering nearby, the chastened pranksters
had paid the full cost of the damage.
He angled toward the only crowded table. The man seated facing him boasted a
handlebar mustache that tapered to waxed, glistening points. They quivered like
the needles on a praxiloscope when he laughed. His name was Jebcoat, and he
hailed from Hivehom, a human born and raised on the thranx capital world. He was
no stranger to heat and humidity. As near as Flinx had been able to tell from
their initial brief contact weeks ago, when he had first arrived in Mimmisompo,