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

The assistant kicked at the dirt. "It's your neck." "Yes, it's my neck."
"Suppose they ask which way you went?"
"Tell them I've headed-" A cough interrupted her. She looked back at Flinx and nodded once. "Just say that I've had to go across Patra."
"But which way across?"
"Across the lake. Sal."
"Oh. Okay, I understand. You've got your reasons for doing this, I guess."
"I guess I do. And if I'm wrong, well, you always wanted to be manager here, anyway, Sal."
"Now hold on a minute, Lauren. I never said-"
"Do the best you can for me," she gently admonished him. "This means something to me."
"You really expect to be back soon?"
"Depends on how things go. See you, Sal."
"Take care of yourself, Lauren." He watched as she turned to rejoin the strange youth, then shrugged and started back up the steps into the lodge.
As Lauren had said, it was her neck.
It didn't take long for the skimmer to be checked out. Flinx climbed aboard and admired the utilitarian vehicle. For almost the first time since he left Drallar, he would be traveling totally clear of such persistent obstacles as mist-shrouded boulders and towering trees. The machine's body was made of black resin. It was large enough to accommodate a dozen passengers and crew. In addition to the standard emergency stores, Lauren provisioned it with additional food and medical supplies. They also took along the dart rifle and several clips and a portable sounding tracker.
Flinx studied the tracking screen and the single moving dot that drifted northwestward across the transparency. A series of concentric gauging rings filled the circular screen. The dot that represented their quarry had already reached the outermost ring.
"They'll move off the screen in a little while," he murmured to Lauren.
"Don't worry. I'm sure they're convinced by now that they've lost us."
"They're zigzagging all over the screen," he noted.
"Taking no chances. Doesn't do any good if you're showing up on a tracker. But you're right. We'd better get moving."
She slid into the pilot's chair and thumbed controls. The whine of the skimmer's engine drowned out the tracker's gentle hum as the craft rose several meters. Lauren held it there as she ran a final instrument check, then pivoted the vehicle on an invisible axis and drove it from the hangar. A nudge of the altitude switch sent them ten, twenty, thirty meters into the air above the lodge. A touch on the accelerator and they were rushing toward the beach.
Despite the warmth of the cabin heater, Flinx still felt cold as he gazed single-mindedly at the screen.
"I told you not to worry," Lauren said with a glance at his expression as they crossed the shoreline. "We'll catch them."
"It's not that." Flinx peered out through the transparent cabin cover. "I was thinking about what might catch us."
"I've yet to see the penestral that can pick out and catch an airborne target moving at our speed thirty meters up. An oboweir might do it, but there aren't any oboweirs in Lake Patra. Leastwise, none that I've ever heard tell of."
Nevertheless, Flinx's attention and thoughts remained evenly divided between the horizon ahead and the potentially lethal waters below.
"I understand you've had some trouble here."
Sal relaxed in the chair in the dining room and sipped at a hot cup of toma as he regarded his visitors. They had arrived in their own mudder, which immediately stamped them as independent as well as wealthy. If he played this right, he might convince them to spend a few days at the lodge. They had several expensive suites vacant, and if he could place this pair in one, it certainly wouldn't do his record any harm. Usually, he could place an offworlder by accent, but not these two. Their words were clear but their phonemes amorphous. It puzzled him.
Routine had returned as soon as Lauren and her charity case had departed. No one had called from down south, not the district manager, not anyone. He was feeling very content. Unless, of course, the company had decided to send its own investigators instead of simply calling in a checkup. That thought made him frown at the woman.
"Say, are you two Company?"
"No," the woman's companion replied, smiling pleasantly. "Goodness no, nothing like that. We just like a little excitement, that's all. If something unusual's going on in the area, it kind of tickles our curiosity, if you know what I mean."
"You had a man killed here, didn't you?" the woman asked.
"Well, yes, it did get pretty lively here for a day." No accounting for taste, Sal mused. "Someone was killed during a fight. A nonguest," he hastened to add. "Right in here. Quite a melee."
"Can you describe any of those involved?" she asked him.
"Not really. I'm not even positive which guests were involved and which day visitors. I didn't witness the argument myself, you see, and by the time I arrived, most of the participants had left."
The woman accepted this admission with a disappointed nod. "Was there a young man involved? Say, of about sixteen?"
"Yes, him I did see. Bright-red hair?"
"That's the one," she admitted.
"Say, is he dangerous or anything?" The assistant manager leaned forward in his chair, suddenly concerned.
"Why do you want to know?" the man asked.
"Well, my superior here, the regular manager-Lauren Walder. She went off with him."
"Went off with him?" The pleasant expression that had dominated the woman's face quickly vanished, to be replaced by something much harder.
"Yes. Three, maybe four days ago now. I'm still not completely sure why. She only told me that the young man had a problem and she was going to try to help him out."
"Which way did their mudder go?" the man asked.
"North, across Lake Patra," Sal informed them.
"They're not in a mudder, though. She took the lodge skimmer."
"A skimmer!" The woman threw up her hands in frustration and sat down heavily in a chair opposite the assistant. "We're losing ground," she told her companion, "instead of gaining on him. If he catches up with them before we do, we could lose him and the . . ." Her companion cut the air with the edge of his hand, and her words trailed away to an indecipherable mumble. The gesture had been quick and partly concealed, but Sal had noticed it nonetheless.
"Now you've really got me worried," he told the pair. "If Lauren's in some kind of trouble-"
"She could be," the man admitted, pleased that the assistant had changed the subject.
Sal thought a moment. "Would she be in danger from these people who had the fight here, or from the redhead?"
"Conceivably from both." The man was only half lying. "You'd better tell us everything you know."