"Mercedes Lackey - A Better Mousetrap" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

A Better Mousetrap


If there was one thing that Dick White had learned in all his time as
SuperCargo of the CatsEye Company Free Trader Brightwing, it was that having a
cat purring in your ear practically forced you to relax. The extremely
comfortable form-molding chair he sat in made it impossible to feel anything
but comfortable, and warm black fur muffled both of Dick White's ears, a
steady vibration massaging his neck. "Build a better mousetrap, and the world
will beat a path to your door," Dick said idly, as SCat poured himself like a
second fluid, black rug over the blue-grey of his lap. It was SKitty who was
curled up around his shoulders, vibrating contentedly in what Dick called her
"subsonic purr-mode," while her mate took it as his responsibility to make
sure there was plenty of shed hair on the legs of his grey shipsuit uniform.

"What?" asked Terran Ambassador Vena Ferducci, looking up from the list of
Lacu'un nobles petitioning for one of SKitty's latest litter. The petite,
dark-haired woman sat in a less comfortable, metal chair behind a stone desk,
which stood next to a metal rack stuffed with archaic rolled paper documents.
The Lacu'un had not yet devised the science of filing paperwork in multiples
yet, which made them ultra-civilised in Vena's opinion. This, her office in
the Palace of the Lacu'ara and Lacu'teveras, was not often used for that very
reason. When she dealt with Terran bureaucracy, she needed every electronic
helper she could get.

The list she perused was very long, and made rather cumbersome due to the
Lacu'un custom of presenting all official court-documents in the form of a
massively ornamented yellow-parchment scroll, with case and end caps of
engraved bronze and illuminated capital-initials. Dick had a notion that
somewhere in the universe there probably was a collector of handwritten
documents who would pay a small fortune for it, but when every petitioner on
the list had been satisfied, it would probably be sent to the under-clerks,
scraped clean, and reused.

"It's an old Terran folk-saying," Dick elaborated, and gestured to the list by
way of explanation. "One which certainly seems to be borne out by our present
situation."

"Yes, well, given the length of this list we're doubly fortunate that SKitty
and SCat are soтАФahтАФfertile, and that BioTech is willing to send us their
shipscat washouts." Vena stretched out her hand towards SCat's head, and the
huge black tom cooperated by craning his neck towards her. Even before her
fingers contacted his fur, SCat was purring loudly, giving Dick an uncannily
similar sensation to being strapped in while the ship he served was under full
power.

Dick White could well be one of the wealthiest supercargoes in the history of
space-tradeтАФhis share of the profits from CatsEye Company's lucrative trade
with the Lacu'un amounted to quite a tidy sum. It wasn't enough to buy and
outfit his own shipтАФyetтАФbut if trade progressed as it had begun, there was the