"C M Kornbluth - Thirteen O'Clock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

muscle he had. The sorcerer screamed and fell over on his face. Peter jammed his knee in the wizard's
inside socket and bore down terribly. He could feel the bones bend in his grip.

"Enough!" gasped the wizard. Peter let him loose.

"You made it," said Almarish. "Two out of three."

Peter studied his face curiously. Take off that beard and you had-

"You said it, Grandfather Packer," said Peter, grinning.-

Almarish groaned. "It's a wise child that knows its own father-grandfather, in this case," he said. "How
could you tell?"

"Everything just clicked," said Peter simply. "You disappearing-that clock-somebody applying American
methods in Ellil-and then I shaved you mentally and there you were. Simple?"

"Sure is. But how do you think I made out here, boy?"

"Shamefully. That kind of thing isn't tolerated any more. It's gangsterism-you'll have to cut it out, gramp."

"Gangsterism be damned!" snorted the wizard. "It's business. Business and common-sense."

"Business maybe, certainly not common-sense. My boys wiped out your guard and I might have wiped
out you if I had magic stronger than yours."^

Grandfather Packer chuckled in glee. "Magic? Ill begin at the beginning. When I got that dad-blamed
clock back in '63 I dropped right into Ellil-onto the head of an assassin who was going for a real
magician. Getting the set-up I pinned the killer with a half-nelson and the magician dispatched him. Then
he got grateful, said he was retiring from public life and gave me a kind of token, good for any three
wishes.
"So I took it, thanking him kindly, and wished for a palace and bunch of gutty retainers. It was in my
mind to run Ellil like a business, and I did it the only way I knew how-force. And from that day to this I
used only one wish and I haven't a dab of magic more than that!"

"I'll be damned!" whispered Peter.

"And you know what I'm going to do with those other two wishes? I'm going to take you and me right
back into the good ole U.S.A.!"

"Will it only send two people?"

"So the magician said."

"Grandfather Packer," said Peter earnestly, "I am about to ask a very great sacrifice of you. It is also
your duty to undo the damage which you have done."

"Oh," said Almarish glumly. "The girl? All right."

"You don't mind?" asked Peter incredulously.