"Foster, Alan Dean - Flinx 1 - For Love of Mother-Not" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

"Well ..." He spared another glance for Pip. Maybe in a little while the flying snake would be ready to take to the air. That could make a significant difference in any fight to come. "If you're sure ..."
She nodded once, appearing as competent as she was beautiful. Lodge manager, he thought. She ought to know what she was talking about. He could trust her for a few minutes, anyway.
"What's so important to show me?" he asked.
"Come with me." Her tone was still soaked with anger. She led him back into the lodge, across the porch and back into the dining room. Several members of her staff were treating one of the women who had been dining when the lights had gone out and the guns had gone off. Her husband and companions were hovering anxiously over her; and she was panting heavily, holding one hand to her chest.
"Heart condition," Lauren explained tersely.
Flinx looked around. Tables and chairs were still overturned, but there was no other indication that a desperate fight had been fought in the room. Paralysis beams did not damage inanimate objects. The man he had slain had been moved by lodge personnel. He was glad of that.
Lauren led him toward the kitchen. Lying next to the doorway were the pair of furry shapes he had noticed when he had first entered the room. Up close, he could see their round faces, twisted in agony. The short stubby legs were curled tightly beneath the fuzzy bodies. Their fur was a rust red except for yellow circles around the eyes, which were shut tight. Permanently.
"Sennar and Soba." Lauren spoke while gazing at the dead animals with a mixture of fury and hurt. "They're wervils-or were," she added bitterly. "I raised them from kittens. Found them abandoned in the woods. They liked to sleep here by the kitchen. Everybody liked to feed them. They must have moved at the wrong time. In the dark, one of those"-she used a word Flinx didn't recognize, which was unusual in itself-"must have mistaken them for you. They were firing at anything that moved, I've been told." She paused a moment, then added, "You must have the luck of a pregnant Yax'm. They hit just about everything in the room except you."
"I was down on the floor," Flinx explained. "I only stand up when I have to."
"Yes, as that one found out." She jerked a thumb in the direction of the main hall. Flinx could see attendants wrapping a body in lodge sheets. He was a little startled to see how big his opponent had actually been. In the dark, though, it's only the size of your knife that matters.
"They didn't have to do this," the manager was murmuring, staring at the dead animals. "They didn't have to be so damned indiscriminate. Four years I've coddled those two. Four years. "They never showed anything but love to anyone who ever went near them." Flinx waited quietly.
After a while, she gestured for him to follow her. They walked out into the main hall, down a side corridor, and entered a storeroom. Lauren unlocked a transparent wall case and removed a large, complex-looking rifle and a couple of small, wheel-shaped plastic containers. She snapped one of them into the large slot set in the underside of the rifle. The weapon seemed too bulky for her, but she swung it easily across her back and set her right arm through the support strap. She added a pistol to her service belt, then led him back out into the corridor.
"I've never seen a gun like that before." Flinx indicated the rifle. "What do you hunt with it?"
"It's not for hunting," she told him. "Fishing gear. Each of those clips"-and she gestured at the wheel-shapes she had handed over to Flinx-"holds about a thousand darts. Each dart carries a few milliliters of an extremely potent neurotoxm. Prick your finger on one end ..." She shrugged meaningfully.
"The darts are loaded into the clips at the factory in Drallar, and then the clips are sealed. You can't get a dart out unless you fire it through this." She patted the butt of the rifle, then turned a corner. They were back in the main hallway.
"You use a gun to kill fish?"
She smiled across at him. Not much of a smile but a first, he thought. "You've never been up to The-Blue-That-Blinded before, have you?"
"I've lived my whole life in Drallar," he said, which for all practical purposes was the truth.
"We don't use these to kill the fish," she explained. "Only to slow them up if they get too close to the boat."
Flinx nodded, trying to picture the weapon in use. He knew that the lakes of The-Blue-That-Blinded were home to some big fish, but apparently he had never realized just how big. Of course, if the fish were proportional to the size of the lakes ... "How big is this lake?"
"Patra? Barely a couple of hundred kilometers across. A pond. The really big lakes are further off to the northwest, like Turquoise and Hanamar. Geographers are always arguing over whether they should be called lakes or inland seas. Geographers are damn fools."
They exited from the lodge. At least it wasn't raining, Flinx thought. That should make tracking the fleeing mudders a little easier.
Flinx jumped, slightly when something landed heavily on his shoulder. He stared down at it with a disapproving look. "About time." The flying snake steadied himself on his master but did not meet his eyes.
"Now that's an interesting pet," Lauren Walder commented not flinching from the minidrag as most strangers did. Another point in her favor, Flinx thought. "Where on Moth do you find a creature like that?"
"In a garbage heap," Flinx said, "which is what he's turned himself into. He overate a few days ago and still hasn't digested it all."
"I was going to say that he looks more agile than that landing implied." She led him around the side of the main lodge building. There was a small inlet and a second pier stretching into the lake. Flinx had not been able to see it from where he had parked his mudder.
"I said that we'd catch up to them." She pointed toward the pier.
The boat was a single concave arch, each end of the arch spreading out to form a supportive hull. The cabin was located atop the arch and was excavated into it. Vents lined the flanks of the peculiar catamaran. Flinx wondered at their purpose. Some heavy equipment resembling construction cranes hung from the rear corners of the aft decking. A similar, smaller boat bobbed in the water nearby.
They mounted a curving ladder and Flinx found himself watching as Lauren shrugged off the rifle and settled herself into the pilot's chair. She spoke as she checked readouts and threw switches. "We'll catch them inside an hour," she assured Flinx. "A mudder's fast, but not nearly as fast over water as this." A deep rumble from the boat's stern; air whistled into the multiple intakes lining the side of the craft, and the rumbling intensified.
Lauren touched several additional controls whereupon the magnetic couplers disengaged from the pier. She then moved the switch set into the side of the steering wheel. Thunder filled the air, making Pip twitch slightly. The water astern began to bubble like a geyser as a powerful stream of water spurted from the subsurface nozzles hidden in the twin hulls. The boat leaped forward, cleaving the waves.
Flinx stood next to the pilot's chair and shouted over the roar of the wind assailing the open cabin. "How will we know which way they've gone?"
Lauren leaned to her right and flicked a couple of switches below a circular screen, which promptly came to life. Several bright yellow dots appeared on the transparency. "This shows the whole lake." She touched other controls. All but two dots on the screen turned from yellow to green. "Fishing boats from the other lodges that ring Patra. They have compatible instrumentation." She tapped the screen, with a fingernail. "That pair that's stayed yellow? Moving, nonorganic, incompatible transponder. Who do you suppose that might be?"
Flinx said nothing, just stared at the tracking screen. Before long, he found himself staring over the bow that wasn't actually a bow. The twin hulls of the ]et catamaran knifed through the surface of the lake as Lauren steadily increased their speed.
She glanced occasionally over at the tracker. "They're moving pretty well-must be pushing their mudders to maximum. Headed due north, probably looking to deplane at Point Horakov. We have to catch them before they cross, of course. This is no mudder. Useless off the water."
"Will we?" Flinx asked anxiously. "Catch them, I mean." His eyes searched the cloud-swept horizon, looking for the telltale glare of diffused sunlight on metal.
"No problem," she assured him. "Not unless they have some special engines in those mudders. I'd think if they did, they'd be using 'cm right now."
"What happens when we catch them?"
"I'll try cutting in front of them," she said thoughtfully. "If that doesn't make them stop, well-" she indicated the rifle resting nearby. "We can pick them off one at a time. That rifle's accurate to a kilometer. The darts are gas-propelled, you see, and the gun has a telescopic sight that'll let me put a dart in somebody's ear if I have to."
"What if they shoot back?"
"Not a paralysis pistol made that can outrange that rifle, let alone cover any distance with accuracy. The effect is dispersed. It's only at close range that paralysis is effective on people. Or lethal to small animals," she added bitterly. "If they'll surrender, we'll take them in and turn them over to the game authorities. You can add your own charges at the same time. Wervils are an endangered species on Moth. Of course, I'd much prefer that the scum resist so that we can defend ourselves."
Such bloodthirstiness in so attractive a woman was no surprise to Flinx. He'd encountered it before in the marketplace. It was her motivation that was new to him. He wondered how old she was. Probably twice his own age, he thought, though it was difficult to tell for sure. Time spent in the wilderness had put rough edges on her that even harsh city life would be hard put to equal. It was a different kind of roughness; Flinx thought it very becoming.
"What .if they choose to give themselves up?" He knew that was hardly likely, but he was curious to know what her contingency for such a possibility might be.
"Like I said, we take them back with us and turn them over to the game warden in Kalish."
He made a short, stabbing motion with one hand. "That could be awkward for me."
"Don't worry," she told him. "I'll see to it that you're not involved. It's not only the game laws they've violated. Remember that injured guest? Ms. Marteenson's a sick woman. The effect of a paralysis beam on her could be permanent. So it's not just the game authorities wholl be interested in these people.
"As to you and your mother, the two of you can disappear. Why has she been kidnapped? For ransom?"
"She hasn't any money," Flinx replied. "Not enough to bother with, anyway."
"Well, then, why?" Lauren's eyes stayed on the tracker, occasionally drifting to scan the sky for signs of rain. The jet boat had a portable cover that she hoped they wouldn't have to use. It would make aiming more difficult.
"That's what I'd like to know," Flinx told her. "Maybe we'll find out when we catch up with them."
"We should," she agreed, "though that won't do Sennar and Soba any good. You've probably guessed by now that my opinion of human beings is pretty low. Present company excepted. I'm very fond of animals. Much rather associate with them. I never had a wervil betray me, or any other creature of the woods, for that matter. You know where you stand with an animal. That's a major reason why I've chosen the kind of life I have."