"James Maxey - The Final Flight of the Blue Bee" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maxey James)

was hanging over open space, supported by a bridge of bees.

The scream long suppressed tore from her lips, echoing in the canyons of the city below.

"We're on top of the Empire State Building, my little Faye Wray," Stinger said. "It's perfect. All the cops
in the city are below us. My swarms have emptied the entire building. My bees are instructed to clog the
air intakes of helicopters. No one's getting up here without a Bee-Wing."

Honey screamed again, until every last spoonful of air was gone. Then she filled her lungs and screamed
some more.

"Yeah," said Stinger. "That's the stuff. I bet they hear that down there. I wonder if they can get a close-up
of your face? What they can do with TV cameras these days--amazing. I was a real science fiction fan
back in 1964. This world astounds me. My wildest dreams couldn't top it. Look at all those lights."

Honey fought to get control of her panic and her vertigo. Suddenly it wasn't screams coming from her
lips, but vomit. She hadn't had any food all day, so only long strings of drooled acid shot from her lips.
She spat, trying to clear the bitter taste from her mouth.

She felt completely empty, hollow as a dry gourd. If the bees were to drop her now, she wouldn't mind.
She would float to earth on the winds, weightless as a leaf.

"All screamed out?" Stinger asked. "That's okay. I'm sure they've got plenty of footage by now."

Honey felt light-headed and dreamy. Her situation assumed a certain nightmarish logic. "What if ... what if
he doesn't come by morning? Are you going to let me go? You can't wait here forever."

"Honey," he said. "I waited forty years. Blue Bee might be in Hawaii, for all I know. I'm prepared to give
him time. We've got a lot of media below. With luck, it won't take too long for him to hear about this."

"Do they even know I'm up here? I was covered by bees."

"Of course. Right now, I've created a ten-foot grid on the street below. It's like a blackboard. My bees
land in it and form messages. I've told them I have a hostage. I've told them not to try anything stupid.
And I've told them I want the Blue Bee."

"W-won't the bees get tired? What if they drop me? You'll go back to prison."

"I'm never going back inside," said Stinger. "I either escape this cleanly or die a bloody, violent death.
Don't worry about the bees getting tired. I coated you with enough pheromone to attract every bee in
New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Pound for pound, bees are much stronger than people.
You've got, oh, maybe three, four tons of bees working to keep you from going plop prematurely."

"Prematurely? You don't need to kill me at all. They know I'm up here. Put me someplace safe now.
Please."

"Honey, you just don't get it. There's a rhythm to these things, a ritual. If only you could have seen the
Blue Bee at his peak, you'd understand. The way he'd swoop in, graceful and acrobatic, snatching the
damsel in distress away from the teeth of danger at the last possible second ... it was impossible not to
love him, in those moments. He made me feel like he was something more than human." Stinger closed