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

"Swallowed-now just a minute," the visitor began. "This is getting ugly. Am I to wait here, accused by a mischievous child?" He shook an angry finger at Flinx, who did not flinch or break his cold, green stare.
"He took them," the boy repeated, "and swallowed them."
"Did you see me take these rings?" the bald man demanded.
"No," Flinx admitted, "I didn't. But you took them. You know you did. They're inside you."
"Charming, the experiences one has on the slumworlds," the man said sarcastically. "Really, though, this exercise has ceased to be entertaining. I must go. My tour allots me only two days in this -wonderful city, and I wouldn't want to waste any more time observing quaint local customs. Out of the kindness of my nature, I will not call upon the gendarmes to arrest you all. One side, please." He shoved past the uncertain shopkeepers and walked easily out into the rain.
Mother Mastiff eyed the man's retreating back. Her friends and fellow merchants watched her expectantly, helplessly. She looked down at the boy. Flinx had stopped crying. His voice was calm and unemotional as he gazed back up at her.
"He took them, mother, and he's walking away with them right now."
She could not explain what motivated her as she calmly told Aljean, "Call a gendarme, then."
The bald man heard that, stopped, and turned back to face them through the now gentle rain. "Really, old woman, if you think I'm going to wait-"
"Aljean," Mother Mastiff said, "Cheneth?" The two shopkeepers exchanged a glance, then jogged out to bring the bald man back-if false restraint charges were filed, they would be against Mother Mastiff and not them.
"I'm sorry, sir," Cheneth, the candy man, said as he gestured with his pistol, "but we're going to have to ask you to wait until the authorities arrive."
"And then what? Are they going to haul a free citizen to the magistrate because a child demands it?"
"A simple body scan should be sufficient," Mother Mastiff said as the three re-entered the shop. "Surely you've no reason to object to that?"
"Of course I'd object to it!" the visitor responded. "They have no reason or right to-"
"My, but you're suddenly arguing a lot for someone with nothing to worry about," Aljean, the clothier, ob-served. She was forty-two years old and had run her way through four husbands. She was very adept at spotting lies, and she was suddenly less convinced of this visitor's innocence. "Of course, if perhaps you realize now that you've somehow made a bit of mistake and that we quaint locals aren't quite the simpletons you believe us to be, and if you'd rather avoid the inconvenience of a scan, not to mention official attention, you'll learn that we're agreeably forgiving here if you'll just return to Mother Mastiff what you've taken."
"I haven't taken a damn-" the bald man started to say.
"The jails of Drallar are very, very uncomfortable," Aljean continued briskly. "Our government resents spending money on public needs. They especially scrimp when it comes to the comfort of wrongdoers. You being an offworlder now, I don't think you'd take well to half a year of unfiltered underground dampness. Mold will sprout in your lungs, and your eyelids will mildew."
All of a sudden, the man seemed to slump in on him-self. He glared down at Flinx, who stared quietly back at him.
"I don't know how the hell you saw me, boy. I swear, no one saw me! No one!"
"I'll be blessed over," Cheneth murmured, his jaw drop-ping as he looked from the thief to the boy who had caught him. "Then you did take the rings!"
"Ay. Call off the authorities," he said to Aljean "You've said it would be enough if I gave back the rings. I agree."
Mother Mastiff nodded slowly. "I agree, also, provided that ye promise never to show your reflective crown in this part of this marketplace ever again."
"My word on it, as a professional," the man promised quickly. "I did not lie when I said that I was on holiday." He gave them a twisted smile. "I like to make my holidays self-supporting."
Mother Mastiff did not smile back. She held out a hand. My kill rings, if ye please."
The man's smile twisted even further. "Soon enough. But first I will need certain edibles. There are several fruits which will suffice, or certain standard medications. I will also need clean cloths and disinfectant. The boy is right, you see. I did swallow them. Provide what I need and in an hour or so you will have your cursed rings back."
And forty minutes later she did.
After the thief and the little group of admiring shopkeepers had gone their respective ways. Mother Mastiff took her charge aside and confronted him with the question no one else had thought to ask.
"Now, boy, ye say ye didn't see him swallow the rings?"
"No, I didn't, Mother." Now that the crowd had dis-persed and he had been vindicated, his shyness returned.
"Then how the ringap did ye know?"
Flinx hesitated.
"Come now, boy, out with it. Ye can tell me," she said in a coaxing tone. "I'm your mother now, remember. The only one you've got. I've been fair and straightforward with ye. Now 'tis your turn to do the same with me."
"You're sure?" He was fighting with himself, she saw. "You're sure you're not just being nice to me to fool me? You're not one of the bad people?"
That was a funny thing for him to bring up, she thought. "Of course I'm not one of them. Do I look like a bad people?"
"N-n-no," he admitted. "But it's hard to tell, some-times."
"You've lived with me for some time now, boy. Ye know me better than that." Her voice became, gentle again. "Come now. Fair is fair. So stop lying to me by insisting you didn't see him swallow those rings."
"I didn't," he said belligerently, "and I'm not lying. The man was-he was starting to walk away from the case, and he was uncomfortable. He was, he felt-what's the word? He felt guilty."
"Now how do ye know that?"
"Because," he murmured, not looking at her but staring out at the street where strange people scurried back and forth in the returning mist, "because I felt it." He put his small hand to his forehead and rubbed gently. "Here."
Great Ganwrath of the Flood, Mother Mastiff thought sharply. The boy's a Talent. "You mean," she asked again, "you read his mind?"
"No," he corrected her. "It's not like that. It's just-it's a feeling I get sometimes."
"Do ye get this feeling whenever ye look at someone who's been guilty?"
"It's not only guilty," he explained, "it's all kinds of feelings. People-it's like a fire. You can feel heat from a fire." She nodded slowly. "Well, I can feel certain things from people's heads. Happiness or fear or hate and lots of other things I'm not sure about. Like when a man and a woman are together."
"Can ye do this whenever ye wish?" she asked.
"No. Hardly ever. Lots of times I can't feel a thing. It's clean then and doesn't jump in on me, and I can relax. Then there's other times when the feeling will just be there-in here," he added, tapping his forehead again. "I was looking toward that man, and the guilt and worry poured out of him like a fire, especially whenever he looked at the jewel case. He was worried, too, about being discovered somehow and being caught, and a lot of other things, too. He was thinking, was throwing out thoughts of lots of quick money. Money he was going to get unfairly."
"Emotions," she mused aloud, "all emotions." She began to chuckle softly. She had heard of such things before. The boy was an empathic telepath, though a crude one. He could read other people's emotions, though not their actual thoughts.
"It's all right, Flinx," she assured him. She put out a hand and gave his hair a playful tousle. "Ye did right well. Ye saved me, saved us both, a lot of money." She looked over at the small leatherine purse that now held the four recovered and cleansed rings. They still smelled of disinfectant.
"No wonder that thief couldn't figure out how you'd spotted him. Ye really didn't see him take the rings."
"No, mother. I wasn't even sure what he'd taken."
"Ye just felt the reaction in. his mind?"