"Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 19 - King of the Slavers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

chasing her came hard-breathing, a man desperate to overtake her because she
was intensely dangerous to him and his career. Winded from the steps he
skidded around the same corner she had rounded, with his legs moving almost in
the manner of a cartoon figure. Treading air while he turned, gun in 6 hand.
His hair was the blue that was fashionable on Franji and his conservative
clothing was expensive. He saw her for something on the order of an instant
before Janja said: "Hi. Chasing me here where we're alone is your second
mistake, demagogue." And she squeezed the grip of her cylindrical weapon. He
fell down unconscious. She did after all abhor violence and most of all
killing and would not set her stopper on its killer setting, its number Three
setting. She had set the modified outworlder stopper on Two. That sonic attack
rendered the "victim" quite unconscious, almost in an instant. The man who had
been lured into following her until she tired him and trapped him, a handsome
man and magnetic-charismatic, fell down like a bundle of laundry and lay just
as forlornly. Janja holstered her stopper. She stepped past him to look both
ways. No one followed them. She squatted, there in the alley off a street of
Marucan on a planet named Franji, and proceeded to strip the unconscious man
until he was entirely naked. His clothes she took. His incriminating weapon
she left in his hand. She touched the stud of his own beeper, knowing it would
alert newspeople. They would come at the rush, because he was who he was, and
more importantly what he was. The Marucan policers were coming now, noisily.
Janja, taking his clothing even unto his boots and chronometer though not his
government-issue beeper, disappeared. Disappeared by running silently up the
dark alley. What she had done to him was, for a man of his sort (a doubly,
hyper-male male of much pride and power and swagger), a fate worse than death.
She had lured 7 and embarrassed and demeaned him. She had assured that he
would become known as a butt. The newspeo-ple, already on their way, would see
to that. Pictures would be taken. Telecommentators would grin, perhaps giggle.
He would be a butt, a joke. Oddly, that would benefit the people of his
world. Within twenty-one minutes Janja was offplanet. Within an hour she was
in space. She had successfully completed her first solo mission for
TransGalactic Order. Grayly. Doing good by doing bad. It took a while-until
the next election-but that ended the career of Senator Takiman of Franji, who
had been so stupid as to make a promise of loyalty to TGO and accept its funds
and then, in the arrogance of high office, fail to keep it. His wife left him,
too. Worse, so did his mistress. 1 Biologically, the question is: Can the
human brain gain control over inherited impulses that were appropriate for
prehistoric man but are inappropriate in the twentieth century? -Harvey
Milkman and Stanley Sunderwirth, in Psychology Today, October 1983 Manjanungo
and Sibanda met on the gigantic wheel of a spaceship docking station that
orbited the planet Qal-ara. The meeting was a fortuitous one, and pure
serendipity. Once three princes from a place called Serendip went off in
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search of a lost lady. Each struggled and squeaked through various adventures
and wound up with something of value entirely different from what he had been
seeking. The word serendipity was born. It applied to Dr. Alex Fleming's
accidental discovery of penicillin, when he was looking for something else