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

Manhattan, game, but a little discouraged by the long trip ahead.
There was another cryтАФa choked-off sobтАФand somehow I was standing, watching
the close walls sway, under my hands. My mouth was open and drums beat behind my
eyes; something hot and wet was running down over my chin. The back of a man before
me was big, broad in a dark coat; the head was bent down, only the mussed hair on the
back of the neck visible. I could not see the other dancer now.
I moved and my foot hit the gun. I grabbed it, went up on my toes, swung it down in a
stiff-armed blow that had all my weight behind it. The impact was solid and unyielding,
like kicking a watermelon. The big wide back twisted, fell away, and I was looking into a
thin, frightened face, coal-dark eyes as big as black pansiesтАФa woman's face.
***
A fan of light from a dropped torch gleamed on the rain-wet wall. I stamped on it,
grabbed for her arm that was thrust out as if to push me away.
"Come on," I said blurrily. "Got a carтАФdown here."
A trickle of blood was running down the high-cheek-boned face. She did not look
much better than I felt. I yanked her arm, and she came, reluctantly.
"Let's goтАФfast." I set off at a ragged run. There might have been a shout from along
the alley behind me; I was not sure, and I did not care. The object of the game was to get
to the car before my legs quit on me, before the rocketing pains back of my eyes blew
their way to the surface and took a piece of skull with them. That was enough for me to
think about at the moment.
 It seemed a long way before I came out onto the street, still holding her damp sleeve
in one hand, the gun in the other, thinking about Mr. Sethys and his chums waiting there
to greet me, but the shining, dark pavement was empty. I groped my way to the canopy
release, popped it, half lifted my new friend in, swung aboard and kicked the car away
from the curb before the hatch dropped. The Humber howled up to speed, bounced her
side bumpers twice on the guide rail as I swung her into a well-lit cross avenue, then
settled down to outrun whatever might be chewing up the pavement behind her.
They were waiting for me at the Gulfstream, three men in a cozy group by the
waterless fountain beside the entrance to the big main drive, standing hatless in the rain. I
slid the Humber on past, whipped to the right at the corner, gunned it back to sixty.
Six blocks from the hotel I parked in a half empty lot littered with fallen palm fronds.
The woman on the seat beside me looked around quickly, then at me.
"We walk from here," I said. My tongue was too thick for my mouth. The pain in my
head had abated to a dull throbbing, but I was dizzy as a weekend sailor in a sixty-mile
gale. The hatch lifted and cold rain spattered in. I helped her out, took a minute to wipe
blood from my chin from a cut lip, started off at a fast walk toward the lights of an all-
night bar shining a cheerful mortuary blue through the smoke-tasting mist.
Inside, we took a table at the back near a door that ought to open onto an alley. I did
not check it; I was not doing anything until I had downed a bracing dram. A thin, sun-
scarred man with small eyes in nests of pale wrinkles came over, took an order for two
double Scotches. So far, my lady fair had not said a word.
"Sethys must have a phone in his car," I told her. "Must have called in, told them
what to look for. Or maybe he didn't. Maybe I spooked. Those three might have been off-
duty waiters sweating out the last bus to the suburbs. Just as well. Don't know what I
stuck my neck into. Good idea to fade out of sight anyway."
The waiter brought the drinks; I took half of mine without coming up for air. My
drinking partner had hers in both hands swallowing. Then she choked, almost dropped
the glass. From her expression I guessed that she had just discovered you do not chugalug
hard liquor.