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

moving. Angelina must have fired up before the wedding and planned every other
step as well. My solitary contribution to all this was a private drunk which
had been very little aid at all. I shuddered at what this meant, yet was still
driven to the only possible conclusion.
"Do you have a drive-right pill?" I asked, hoarsely.
It was in the palm of her hand even as I spoke. Small, round, pink, with a
black skull and crossbones on it. A sobering invention of some mad chemist
that worked like a metabolic vacuum cleaner. Short minutes after hitting the
hydrochloric acid pool of my stomach the ingredients would be doing a
blitzkrieg attack through my bloodstream. Not only does it remove all of the
alcohol but strips away all of the side products associated with drinking as
well, so that the pitiful subject is instantly cold sober and painfully aware
of it.
"I can't take it without water," I mumbled, blinking at the plastic cup in
her other hand. There was no turning back. With a last happy shudder I flipped
the deadly thing into the back of my throat and drained the cup.
They say it doesn't take long, but that is an objective time. Subjective
was hours. It is a most unusual experience and difficult to describe. Imagine
if you will what it feels like to take the nozzle of a cold water hose in your
mouth and then to have the water turned on. And then, an instant later, to
have the water gushing in great streams from every orifice of your body,
including the pores, until you are flushed completely clean.
"Wow," I said weakly, sitting up and dabbing at my forehead with my
handkerchief. The houses of a small village rushed by and were replaced by
farmlands. Angelina drove with calm efficiency and the boiler chunked merrily
as it ate another brick of peat.
"Feeling better, I hope?" She dived into a traffic circle and left it by a
different road with only a quick glimpse at the map. "The alarm is out for us,
army, navy, everything. I've been listening to their command radio."
"Are we going to get away?"
"I doubt it--not unless you come up with some bright idea very quickly.
They have a solid ring with aerial cover around the area and are tightening
it."
I was still recovering from the heroic treatment of the drive-right pill and
had not collected all my wits. There was a direct connection from my muddled
thoughts to my vocal cords that had no intervening censor of intelligence.
"A great start to marriage. If this is what it is like no wonder I have
been avoiding it all these years."
The car swung off the road and shuddered to a stop in the deep grass under
a row of blue-leaved trees. Angelina was out, had slammed the door and was
reaching for her bag before I had time to react. I tried to tell her.
"I'm a fool . . ."
"Then I'm a fool too for marrying you." She was dry eyed and cold of voice
with all of her emotions strictly under control. "I tricked you and trapped
you into marriage because it was what I thought you really wanted. I was
wrong, so it is going to end right now before it really gets started. I'm
sorry, Jim. You made an entirely new life for me and thought I could make one
for you. It has been fun knowing you. Thank you and good-by."
By the time she had finished, my thoughts had congealed into something
roughly resembling their normal shape and I was weak but ready. I was out of