"Barry Longyear - Enemy Mine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

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The Dracon's three-fingered hands flexed. In the thing's yellow eyes I could read the desire to have those
fingers around either a weapon or my throat. As I flexed my own fingers, I knew it read the same in my
eyes.
"Irkmaan!" the thing spat.
"You piece of Drac slime." I brought my hands up in front of my chest and waved the thing on. "Come
on, Drac; come and get it."
"Irkmaan vaa, koruum su!"
"Are you going to talk, or fight? Come on!" I could feel the spray from the sea behind me-a boiling
madhouse of white-capped breakers that threatened to swallow me as it had my fighter. I had ridden my
ship in. The Drac had ejected when its own fighter had caught one in the upper atmosphere, but not
before crippling my power plant. I was exhausted from swimming to the grey, rocky beach and pulling
myself to safety. Behind the Drac, among the rocks on the otherwise barren hill, I could see its ejection
capsule. Far above us, its people and mine were still at it, slugging out the possession of an uninhabited
corner of nowhere. The Drac just stood there and I went over the phrase taught us in training-a phrase
calculated to drive any Drac into a frenzy. "Kiz da yuomeen Shizumaat!" Meaning: Shizumaat, the most
revered Drac philosopher, eats kiz excrement. Some thing on the level of stuffing a Moslem full of pork.
The Drac opened its mouth in horror, then closed it as anger literally changed its color from yellow to
reddish-brown. "Irkmaan, yaa stupid Mickey Mouse is!"
I had taken an oath to fight and die over many things, but that venerable rodent didn't happen to be one
of them. I laughed, and continued laughing until the guffaws in combination with my exhaustion forced
me to my knees. I forced open my eyes to keep track of my enemy. The Drac was running toward the
high ground, away from me and the sea. I half-turned toward the sea and caught a glimpse of a million
tons of water just before they fell on me, knocking me unconscious. |




"Kiz da yuomeen, Irkmaan, ne?" My eyes were gritty with sand and stung with salt, but some part of my
awareness pointed out: "Hey, you're alive." I reached to wipe the sand from my eyes and found my
hands bound. A straight metal rod had been run through my sleeves and my wrists tied to it. As my tears
cleared the sand from my eyes, I could see the Drac sitting on a smooth black boulder looking at me. It
must have pulled me out of the drink. "Thanks, toadface. What's with the bondage?" "Ess?"
I tried waving my arms and wound up giving an impression of an atmospheric fighter dipping its wings.
"Untie me, you Drac slime!" I was seated on the sand, my back against a rock.
The Drac smiled, exposing the upper and lower mandibles that looked human -except, that instead of
separate teeth, they were solid. "Eh, ne, Irkmaan." It stood, walked over to me and checked my bonds.
"Untie me!"
The smile disappeared. 'We!" It pointed at me with a yellow finger. "Kos son va?"
"I don't speak Drac, toadface. You speak Esper or English?"
The Drac delivered a very human-looking shrug, then pointed at its own chest. "Kos va son Jeriba

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Shigan." It pointed again at me. "Kos son va?"