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

brainless, with wide flexible lips. The brain is under a bony hump set between the bases of the
necks. This puppeteer wore only its own coat of brown hair, with a mane that extended all the way
up its spine to form a thick mat over the brain. I'm told that the way they wear the mane
indicates their status in society, but to me it could have been anything from a dockworker to a
jeweler to the president of General Products.

I watched with the rest as it came across the floor, not because I'd never seen a puppeteer but
because there is something beautiful about the dainty way they move on those slender legs and tiny
hooves. I watched it come straight toward me, closer and closer. It stopped a foot away, looked me
over, and said, "You are Beowulf Shaeffer, former chief pilot for Nakamura Lines."

Its voice was a beautiful contralto with not a trace of accent. A puppeteer's months are not
only the most flexible speech organs around but also the most sensitive hands. The tongues are
forked and pointed; the wide, thick lips have little fingerlike knobs along the rims. Imagine a
watchmaker With a sense of taste in his fingertips ...

I cleared my throat. "That's right."

It considered me from two directions. "You would be interested in a high-paying job?"

"I'd be fascinated by a high-paying job."

"I am our equivalent of the regional president of General Products. Please come with me, and we
will discuss this elsewhere."

I followed it into a displacement booth. Eyes followed me all the way. It was embarrassing being
accosted in a public drugstore by a two-headed monster. Maybe the puppeteer knew it. Maybe it was
testing me to see how badly I needed money.

My need was great. Eight months had passed since Nakamura Lines had folded. For some time before
that I had been living very high on the hog, knowing that my back pay would cover my debts. I
never saw that back pay. It was quite a crash, Nakamura Lines. Respectable middleaged businessmen
took to leaving their hotel windows without their lift belts. Me, I kept spending. If I'd started
living frugally, my creditors would have done some checking ... and I'd have ended in debtor's
prison.

The puppeteer dialed thirteen fast digits with its tongue. A moment later we were elsewhere. Air
puffed out when I opened the booth door, and I swallowed to pop my ears.

"We are on the roof of the General Products building." The rich contralto voice thrilled along
my nerves, and I had to remind myself that it was an alien speaking, not a lovely woman. "You must
examine this spacecraft while we discuss your assignment."

I stepped outside a little cautiously, but it wasn't the windy season. The roof was at ground
level. That's the way we build on We Made It. Maybe it has something to do with the fifteen-
hundred-mile-an-hour winds we get in summer and winter, when the planet's axis of rotation runs
through its primary, Procyon. The winds are our planet's only tourist attraction, and it would be
a shame to slow them down by planting skyscrapers in their path. The bare, square concrete roof
was surrounded by endless square miles of desert, not like the deserts of other inhabited worlds