"Larry Niven - Crashlander (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

have been rumors."

"Bring 'em in." As an afterthought I added, "I can also tell them that your world is moonless.
That should be good for a footnote somewhere."

"I do not understand." But two long necks had drawn back, and the puppeteer was watching me like
a pair of pythons.

"You'd know what a tide was if you had a moon. You couldn't avoid it."

"Would you be interested in --"

"A million stars? I'd be fascinated. I'll even sign a contract if it states what we're hiding.
How do you like being blackmailed for a change?"



GHOST: TWO

I tried to script the story myself, of course. There was a computer program that would do it as
an interview. I made lots of notes ... too many notes, because any time I tried to write text for
myself, I blocked.

So I advertised for a ghost.

Ander Smittarasheed answered.

His type was familiar enough. He was a gaudy flatlander athlete, too aware of the limps and
lames around him, very aware that any woman was his for the asking. It all showed in his words and
body language.

Maybe I wouldn't even have hired him, but he just pushed into the situation without giving me a
chance to react. Before my caution caught up, I was telling him everything ... nearly everything.
He turned it into a one-act play between me and the interview program, all in one afternoon. We
spent two days polishing before we filmed it. The recording sold instantly to the nets.

He could write. That in itself was amazing.

I said, "I couldn't tell you about the blackmail aspect." We weren't shouting now. The undersea
dome isn't really glass; it's something that absorbs shock waves, including sound, not to mention
tsunamis.

Ander Smittarasheed grinned at me patronizingly. "Did you think you were putting something over
on General Products!"

"At the time. I still don't know for sure. Maybe I was crazy to think that a spacegoing species
wouldn't understand tides."

"Maybe. But why would they send a human pilot to learn what they already knew?"