"Harry Harrison - SSR 02 - The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge
Chapter 1

I stood in line, as patient as the other taxpayers, my filled out forms
and my cash gripped body in my hand. Cash, money, the old fashioned green
folding stuff. A local custom that I intended to make expensive to the local
customers. I was scratching under the artificial beard, which itched
abominably, when the man before me stepped out of the way and I was at the
window. My finger stuck in the glue and I had a job freeing it without pulling
the beard off as well.
"Come, come, pass it over," the aging, hatchet-faced, bitter and shrewish
female official said, hand extended impatiently.
"On the contrary," I said, letting the papers and banknotes fall away to
disclose the immense .75 recoilless pistol that I held. " You pass it over.
All of that tax money you have extracted from the sheep like suckers who
populate this backward planet."
I smiled to show that I meant it and she choked off a scream and began
scrabbling in the cash drawer. It was a broad smile that showed all of my
teeth, which I had stained bright red, which should have helped her decide on
the proper course of action. As the money was pushed towards me I stuffed it
into my long topcoat that was completely lined with deep pockets.
"What are you doing?" the man behind me gasped, eyes bulging like great
white grapes.
"Taking money," I said and flipped a bundle at him. "Why don't you have
some yourself." He caught it by reflex, goggled at it, and all the alarms went
off at once and I heard the doors crashing shut. The cashier had managed to
trigger an alarm.
"Good for you," I said, "but don't let a minor thing like that prevent you
from keeping the cash coming."
She gasped and started to slip from sight, but a wave of the gun and
another flash of my carmine dentures restored a semblance of life, and the
flow of bills continued. People started to rush about and gun-waving guards
began to appear looking around enthusiastically for someone to shoot, so I
triggered the radio relay in my pocket. There was a series of charming
explosions all about the bank, from every wastebasket where I had planted a
gas bomb, followed by the even more charming screams of the customers. I
stopped stowing money long enough to slip on the gas-tight goggles and settle
them into place. And to clamp my mouth shut so I was forced to breathe through
the filter plugs in my nostrils.
It was fascinating to watch. Blackout gas is invisible and has no odor but
it does contain a chemical that acts almost instantly, bringing about a
temporary but complete paralysis of the optic nerve. Within fifteen seconds
everyone in the bank was blind.
With the exception of James Bolivar diGriz, myself, man of many talents.
Humming a happy tune through closed lips I stowed away the remaining money. My
benefactress had finally slid from sight and was screaming incontinently
somewhere behind the counter. So were a lot of other people. There was plenty
of groping about and falling over things as I made my way through this little
blacked out corner of bedlam. An eerie sensation indeed, the one-eyed man in
the country of the blind and all that. A crowd had already gathered outside,