"Stephen Goldin - The Sword Unswayed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldin Stephen)

The robot had cleared a space for itself through the mob that scattered before it. Its gaze reached Dinh
and Rabinowitz, and suddenly stopped. With a roar of incoherent syllables, the alien picked up a butter
knife from a nearby table, lowered its head and charged straight at them.

Even dressed as they were -- Dinh in her tight silk dress, Rabinowitz in her black strapless formal with
the half-high heels -- either woman could have outrun the alien in a footrace. But the surprise of its attack
froze them momentarily; the alien was almost upon them before they reacted. Rabinowitz recovered first.
Grabbing the chair next to her, she swung it straight into the attacker's path.

A human could have easily avoided the obstacle and kept on coming. Even an inexperienced alien who
left the automatic guidance system turned on would have moved casually around it. But this alien had the
autos off and didn't have the proper reflexes to deal with sudden changes. Its legs hit the chair and lost
what little balance they had. The creature sprawled on the ground and slid across the polished floor three
meters past the women who had been its targets. Rabinowitz and Dinh each tossed on a couple more
chairs, then together overturned a round banquet table and pinned the hapless robot beneath it.

The alien tried to get back up, flailing its robot limbs madly and looking like a turtle trying to swim across
a tile floor. The tension in the room broke and everyone started laughing. The alien, realizing its position
was hopeless, suddenly froze in place.

"Show's over," Rabinowitz announced when she could stop laughing long enough. "He's off-teeped and
gone home. Somebody call the police."

The police came, in the person of one detective and one uniformed officer. They impounded the
rent-a-bod and asked general questions of everyone in the hall. When they learned the alien had homed
in specifically on Dinh and Rabinowitz, they asked more pointed questions of them. Both women
acknowledged knowing and having business dealings with extraterrestrials, but neither knew of anyone,
off Earth or on, who wanted to kill them. Finally, after two hours of taking statements, the police left.

"Well, that was a nice little adrenaline rush," Rabinowitz said, "but now I really _do_ have to be going if
I'm to be at all coherent tomorrow."

"I really did want to talk with you," Dinh said, reaching out to grab her arm. "I hoped that we could . .
.well, I never get a chance to see you in person, and there's much to tell you."

Rabinowitz looked into Dinh's eyes, sighed, and quickly reviewed her schedule. "Will you still be in the
City Monday? Good, why don't we have lunch then? Call me Monday morning and we'll set up a time
and place."

As she walked away, Rabinowitz could feel Dinh's eyes following her with a strange intensity. She almost
wished she hadn't made the date. Whenever Bian got this intense back in college, trouble usually wasn't
far away.

"This could be unpleasant," she muttered. "Please, Bian, I hope you're smart enough to know that some
things exist better as memories."

***

_The bare stage was littered with burned timbers, all that remained of the once-proud Globe Theatre.
You could almost see little wisps of smoke curling upward from the charred beams that had fallen