"C M Kornbluth - The Luckiest Man In Denv" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

gone to the trouble of learning his tastes? What was she up to? After all, she wasGriffin's woman.

"Coming down?" she asked, awed. "Where have you been?"

"The eighty-ninth, as a guest of that fellow Almon. The vista is immense."

"I've never been . . ." she murmured, and then said decisively: "You belong up there. And higher.Griffin
laughs at me, but he's a fool. Last night in chamber we got to talking about you, I don't know how, and
he finally became quite angry and said he didn't want to hear another word." She smiled wickedly. "I was
revenged, though."

Blank-faced, he said: "You must be a good hand at revenge, Selene, and at stirring up the need for it." -

The slight hardening of her smile meant that he had scored and he hurried by with a rather formal
salutation.

Burn him for an Angelo, but she was easy enough to take! The contrast of the metallic garment with her
soft, white skin was disturbing, and her long hair suggested things. It was hard to think of her as scheming
something or other; scheming Selene was displaced in his mind by Selene in chamber.

But what was she up to? Had she perhaps heard that he was to be elevated? WasGriffingoing to be
swooped on by the Maintainers? Was he to kill offGriffinso she could leech onto some rising third party?
Was she perhaps merely giving her man a touch of the lash?

He wished gloomily that tha binoculars problem and the Selene problem had not come together. That
trickster Almon had spoken of youth as though it were something for congratulation; he hated being
young and stupid and unable to puzzle out the faulty binoculars and the warmth ofGriffin's woman.
 The attack alarm roared through the Spartan corridor. He ducked through the nearest door into a vacant
bedroom and under the heavy steel table. Somebody else floundered under the table a moment later, and
a third person tried to join them.

The firstcomer roared: "Get out and find your own shelter! I don't propose to be crowded out by you or
to crowd you out either and see your ugly blood and brains if there> a hit. Go, now!"

"Forgive me, sir! At once, sir!" the latecomer wailed; and scrambled away as the alarm continued to
roar.

Reuben gasped at the "sirs" and looked at his neighbor. It was May! Trapped, no doubt, on an
inspection tour of the level.

"Sir," he said respectfully, "if you wish to be alone, I can find another room."

"You may stay with me for company. Are you one of mine?" There was power in the general's voice and
on his craggy face.

"Yes, sir. May's man Reuben, of the eighty-third level, Atomist."

May surveyed him, and Reuben noted that there were pouches of skin depending from cheekbones and
the jaw line-dead-looking, coarse-pored skin.