"Keith Laumer - Retief !" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

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 TERRY VS. FLAP-JACK
"Let me congratulate you," the voice said. Retief turned. An immense Flap-jack, hung with
crimson trappings, rippled at his side. "Your skirmish-forms fight well.
I think we will find in each other worthy adversaries."
"Thanks," Retief replied. "I'm sure the test would be interesting, but I'm hoping we can avoid
it."
"Avoid it? Well, we can resolve these matters later. I am called Hoshick of the Mosaic of the
Two Dawns."
"I'm Retief . . . of the Mountain of Red Tape."
"As soon as we realized that you were sportsmen like ourselves," Hoshick continued, "we
provided a bit of activity for you. We ordered out our heavier equipment
and a few trained skirmishers and soon we'll be able to give you an adequate show, or so I
hope."
"Additional skirmishers?" said Retief. "How many, if you don't mind my asking?"
"For the moment, perhaps a few hundred. Thereafter . . . well, I'm sure we can arrange that
between us. Personally I would prefer a contest of limited scopeтАФno nuclear or radiation-effect
weapons."
"Oh, by all means," Retief said. "No atomics. It's wasteful of troops. I wondered if you've
considered eliminating weapons altogether?"
"Pardon my laughter, but surely you jest?"
"As a matter of fact," said Retief, "we ourselves try to avoid the use of weapons. You see,
we're up against a serious problem with regard to our skirmish-forms: a low birth rate. Therefore
we've reluctantly taken to substitutes for the mass actions so dear to the heart of the sportsman.
It's quite simple, really. Each side selects a representative and the two individuals settle the issue
between them."
"You don't mean . . . ?"
"That's right," said Retief. "You and me."
BAEN BOOKS by KEITH LAUMER
Retief!
Odyssey (forthcoming)
 EXTRAORDINARY
DIPLOMATS

by David Drake
Keith Laumer was a perfectionist who lived on a two-acre island in the middle of an eighteen-
acre Florida lake. He had what is almost certainly the world's largest collection of original
bodystyle (that is, 1967тАУ68) Mercury Cougars. (The picture in The Faces of Science Fiction
shows him sitting in #44, but he reached that number many years before his death.)
Keep those independently verifiable facts in mind, in case something strikes you as
improbable as you read on.
Keith wrote in most of the sub-genres within science fiction. Picking a few off the top of my
head, there's alien invasion (The House in November), military SF (the Bolo series), parallel
worlds (Worlds of the Imperium), space opera (Galactic Odyssey, one of my all-time favorite SF
novels, and one of the very few to have a black hero)тАФ
тАФAnd the Retief series, the most remarkable of the lot, because the stories are funny besides
being . . . but we'll come to the "besides" later.
The main thing all of Keith's work has in common is its aura of realism. A writer ought to