"Jerry Pournelle - Houses of the Kzinti" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pournelle Jerry)

a frown over his eyes, opened his mouth in what, to
humans, might be a smile.
But kzinti smiles showed dagger teeth and always
meant immediate threat. This
one was saying something that sounded like,
"Clash-rowll whuff, rurr fitz."
Locklear needed a few seconds to translate it, and by
that time the second kzin
was saying it in Interworld: "Grraf-Commander says,
'Speak when you are spoken
to.' For myself I would prefer that you remained
silent. I have eaten no
monkey-meat for too long."
While Locklear composed a reply, the big one-the
Grraf-Commander,
evidently-spoke again to his fellow. Something about
whether the monkey knew his
posture was deliberately obscene. Locklear, lying on
his back on a padded table
as big as a Belter's honeymoon bed, realized his arms
and legs were flung wide.
"I am not very fluent in the Hero's tongue," he said
in passable Kzin,
struggling to a sitting position as he spoke.
As he did, some of that pain localized at his right
collarbone. Locklear moved
very slowly thereafter. Then, recognizing the
dot-and-comma-rich labels that
graced much of the equipment in that room, he decided
not to ask where he was.
He could be nowhere but an emergency surgical room
for kzin warriors. That meant
he was on a kzin ship.
A faint slitting of the smaller kzin's eyes might
have meant determination, a
grasping for patience, or-if Locklear recalled the
texts, and if they were
right, a small "if" followed by a very large one-a
pause for relatively cold
calculation. The smaller kzin said, in his own
tongue, "If the monkey speaks the
Hero's tongue, it is probably as a spy."
"My presence here was not my idea," Locklear pointed
out, surprised to find his
memory of the language returning so quickly. "I
boarded the Weasel on command to
leave a dangerous region, not to enter one. Ask the
ship's quartermaster, or
check her records."
The commander spat and sizzled again: "The crew are