"Keith Laumer & Eric Flint - Future Imperfect" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

"Sure. Plenty of action. We had most of the regular spring crowd down here when the
word went out. Most of 'em stayed on. A few tourists pulled out, but what the hell. We're
doing OK. We got power, water, plenty of reserve food. Every hotel in town had their
freezers stocked for a big summer trade. We're all rightтАФfor another six months, anyway.
After thatтАФwell, I got a boat staked out. For a grand I can fix you with a spot."
I told him I would let him know later, took the key to a suite on the hundred and
twelfth, and took the high-speed lift up.
It was a nice room, spacious, tastefully decorated, with a big double bed and a bath
big enough to water a pet hippo in. I soaked off the dust of five days' travel, called room
service for a change of clothes. I had a drink in the room, then, prompted by a vague
yearning for human companionship, went down to the tenth floor terrace for dinner.
The best of the sunset was just past. Coal-black clouds rimmed with melted gold hung
over the ink-colored sea like a threat. The sky was glowing yellow green, and it shed an
eerie, enchanted light over the tables, the potted palms, the couples at the tables.
Off to the north you could see a dull glow in the skyтАФa reflection from the red-hot
lava that was building a new mountain range across Georgia. The surface of the Gulf was
a little odd too. The normal wave pattern was disturbed by an overlay of ripples set up by
the constant minor trembling of the sea bottom. But the band murmured of love and the
diners smiled and lifted glasses and to hell with tomorrow.
***
After a nice dinner of fresh scampi and Honduras shrimp accented with an Anjou
ros├й, I went down to the pleasure rooms on the third floor. Anzio was there, wearing his
pale lavender tux and overlooking the tables with his version of a look of benign
efficiencyтАФan expression like Caesar's favorite executioner picking out his next client.
"Howzit, Mal," he checked me over with his quick glance that could estimate the size
of a bankroll to the last half cee. "Care to try your luck tonight?"
"Maybe later, Sal," I told him. "Who's in town?"
He reeled off a roster of familiar ne'er-do-wells and the parasites who preyed off
them. I found my attention wandering. It was a nice night, a nice crowd, but something
was worrying me. I kept remembering the man with the broken legs, and the silent, not
overly bright boys who had come gunning for himтАФand for me. Three of them. All dead.
Killed by me, a peaceful man who'd never fired a shot in anger until yesterday. But what
else could I have done? They were out to killтАФand I had beaten them to the prize. It was
that simple. And yet it was not simple at all.
" . . . . people in town," Sal was saying. "Some strange cats, true, but rolled, Mal,
rolled."
"Who's that fellow?" A slim chap was moving past in black tails and white tie, almost
but not quite conservative enough to look a little odd in the fashionable crowd.
"Huh? I dunno." Sal lifted his chin in a gesture of dismissal. "One of those kooks in
here for this convention, I guess."
"What convention?" I did not know quite what it was about the man's look that
bothered me. He was bland-faced, fortyish, well groomed, quiet, wearing about as much
expression as an omelet.
"This noomismatics bunch, or whatever you call it. Got the twenty-eighth and twenty-
ninth floors. Biggest bunch of creeps you ever saw, if you ask me. No action there, Mal."
"Numismatics, huh?" Coin collectors. I had a coin upstairsтАФa heavy gold coin,
handed me by a dying man with as wild a tale as ever curled a kid's hair at bedtime. He
had wanted me to take itтАФsomewhere, tell someone his story. Some story. I would wind
up either kicked down a couple of flights of official stairs, or locked up until the birdies
stopped singing in my ears. Mammoths under ice. Cave men in fancy pants, packing ray