"Foster, Alan Dean - Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

hand, the mystery of the sealed trunk appealed to him. Who
knew what he'd find in there once he opened it up? Maybe
the car had belonged to a smuggler who had had to hide a
hot cargo fast, and the trunk was full of lovely golden
ingots, or diamonds, or ninety-year-old cognac, which the
smuggler had planned to reclaim a few weeks later, except
that something unexpected had come up. On the fourth
hand --

The dealer said, "How'd you like to take her out for
another test spin, then?"

Norton shook his head. "Don't think I need to. I've got
a good idea of how she rides."

"Well, then, let's step into the office and close the deal."

Sidestepping the maneuver, Norton said, "What year did
you say she was?"

"Oh, about a 'sixty-four, 'sixty-five."

4 Robert Silverberg

"You aren't sure?"

"You can't really tell with these foreign jobs, sometimes.
You know, they don't change the model for five, six, ten
years in a row, except in little ways that only an expert
would notice. Take Volkswagen, for instance -- "

"And I just realized," Norton cut in, "that you never told
me what make she is, either."

"Peugeot, maybe, or some kind of Fiat," said the dealer
hazily. "One of those kind."

"You don't know?"

A shrug. "Well, we checked a lot of the style books going
back a few years, but there are so damn many of these
foreign cars around, and some of them they import only a
few thousand, and -- well, so we couldn't quite figure it
out."

Norton wondered how he was going to get spare parts for
a car of unknown make and uncertain date. Then he realized
that he was thinking of the car as his, already, even though
the more he considered the deal, the less he liked it. And
then he thought of those ingots in the trunk. The rare