"To Sail Beyond the Sunset - Robert Heinlein" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
Tennyson, Ulysses



Chapter 1 - The Committee for Aesthetic Deletions

I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a stranger; the cat was not.

I closed my eyes and tried to pull myself together - hook 'now' to mp memory of last night.

No good. There wasn't any `last night'. My last dear memory was of being a passenger in a Burroughs irrelevant bus, bound for New Liverpool, when there was a loud bang, my head hit the seat in front of me, then a lady handed me a baby and we started filing out of the starboard emergency exit, me with a cat in one arm and a baby in the other, and I saw a man with his right arm off -

I gulped and opened my eyes. A stranger in my bed was better than a man bleeding to death from a stump where his right forearm ought to be. Had it been a nightmare? I fervently hoped so.

If it was not, then what had I done with the baby? And whose baby was it? Maureen, this won't do. Mislaying a baby is inexcusable. `Pixel, have you seen a baby?' The cat stood mute and a plea of not guilty was directed by the court.

My father once told me that I was the only one of his daughters capable of sitting down in church and finding that I had sat on a hot lemon meringue pie... anyone else would have looked. (I had looked, But my cousin Nelson - Oh, never mind.)

Regardless of lemon pies, bloody stumps, or missing babies, there was still this stranger in my bed, his bony back toward me - husbandly rather than loverly. (But I did not recall marrying him.)

I've shared beds with men before, and with women, and wet babies, and cats who demand most of the bed, and (once) with a barbershop quartet. But I do like to know with whom I am sleeping (just an old-fashioned girl, that's me). So I said to the cat, `Pixel, who is he? Do we know him?'

'No-o-o-o.'

'Well, let's check: I put a hand on the man's shoulder, intending to shake him awake and then ask where we had met - or had we?

His shoulder was cold.

He was quite dead.

This is not a good way to start the day.

I grabbed Pixel and got out of bed by instantaneous translation; Pixel protested. I said sharply, `Shut up, you! Mama has problems.' I forced a thalamic pause of at least a microsecond, maybe longer, and decided not to flee headlong outdoors, or out into the hallway, as the case may be... but to slow down and attempt to assess the situation, before screaming for help. Perhaps just as well, as I found that I was barefooted all the way up. I am not jumpy about skin but it did seem prudent to dress before reporting a corpse. Police were certain to want to question me and I have known cops who would exploit any advantage in order to throw one off balance.

But first a look at the corpse.

Still clutching Pixel I went round and bent over the other side of the bed. (Gulp.) No one I knew. No one I would choose to bed with, even were he in perfect health. Which he was not; that side of the bed was soggy with blood. (Two gulps and a frisson.) He had bled from his mouth - or his throat had been cut; I was not sure which and was unwilling to investigate.

So I backed away and looked around for my clothes. I knew in my bones that this bedroom was part of a hostelry; rooms for hire do not taste like private homes. It was a luxury suite; it took me a longish time to poke through all the closets and cubbyholes and drawers and cupboards et cetera . . . and then to do it all over again when the first search failed to locate my clothes. The second search, even more thorough, found not a rag - neither his size nor my size, neither women's clothes nor men's.

I decided willy-nilly to telephone the manager, tell him the problem, and let him cal the cops - and ask him for a courtesy bathing robe or kimono or some such.

So I looked for a telephone.

Alexander Graham Bell had lived in vain.

I stopped in frustration. `Name of a dog! Where have they hidden that frimping phone?'