"Tom Purdom-Toys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

black, hairy monster leaping toward him.
The gorilla struck at his gun with its open hand. The gun flew across the room. The gorilla's left hand
shot toward his face and he rolled out of its way and jumped to his feet.
 "Get 'em!" a voice yelled over the loudspeaker. "Kill 'em. Let 'em have it."
Edelman crouched with his hands raised. The gorilla rested on its knuckles and looked up at him
warily. Its eyes glittered above the homemade gas mask strapped on its nose. It was more intelligent than
any gorilla that had ever lived in the wild and it had been bought to be a bodyguard as well as a pet-- in a
world where any nine year old boy who wanted to could buy a learning program that would make him an
expert in any unarmed art in a few months of solitary, drugged study with a practicing dummy.
The gorilla's powerful legs pushed it toward him like a cannonball. Its right hand shot toward his
stomach. He jumped away from the blow and his right foot swung toward its legs.
The gorilla twisted around in midair. The edge of his boot-sole slid along its left leg. He pulled in his
foot and the gorilla landed in front of him and launched itself at him again. His hand closed around its right
wrist and guided it past him, it launched a kick at his side as it went by.
He started bending away from the kick as soon as he saw it coming. It rammed into his thigh and he hit
the floor on his shoulder and rolled out of the fall yelling for help. "Call him off," he heard Fracarro yelling
through her loudspeaker. "I'll kill him. Call him off."
He pulled out his knife out of its sheath. The gun was lying under a chair on the other side of the room.
The gorilla was scrambling to its feet and two voices were yelling over the loudspeaker at the same time.
"Stay where you are, Hector," a girl was screaming. "Leave her alone." "Keep him away from the gun,
Joey," a boy yelled. "Don't let him get his hands on the gun."
The gorilla raced toward the gun on all fours. Edelman scrambled across the room jabbering like a
frightened idiot and jumped in front of it with the knife poised at his hip. The gorilla hurled itself at his face
and he grabbed it by the wrist and steeled himself to plunge in the knife as it went by.
***


The floor dropped away from him. His stomach turned over and he lost his balance and stumbled. The
elevator door slid open and he saw a boy in a gas mask standing in the elevator with a tube cradled
under his arm.
He threw himself behind the chair. A green light filled the room. He grabbed the gun and pulled himself
into a ball and the elevator door closed.
He stood up cautiously. If the kids hadn't been watching him, he would have slumped into the chair
and put his head in his hands. The laser beam had probably been too weak to penetrate his suit-- it had
looked like the kid had modified the beam that had come with his genetic engineering kit-- but if he had
been looking at it when it went off he would have been blinded.
"What are you doing down there?" Fracarro screamed. "What stupid games are you playing now?"
He slipped back into character as soon as he heard her voice. "He nearly blinded me," he whined. "He
shot a laser at me. The gorilla nearly stole my gun."
Fracarro swore in Italian. "Tell this smelly hairball of yours to turn around," she yelled at the kids. "If it
makes one move I don't like, I'm going to turn its hide into a fountain."
The loudspeaker picked up a gasp. "Turn around, Hector," a girl said. "Stand still. Keep your back to
the lady. Please don't move."
The gorilla on the fourth floor snarled. Its feet shuffled on the floor. Fracarro walked across the room
and a moment later the drug in her injector took effect and a big body slid to the floor.
Edelman looked around the room and frowned stupidly. He bent over as if he were pleading and
started talking in code language. "Tell them you're going to shoot the gorilla if they don't surrender," he
whined. "They came up once. Maybe we can draw them up again. I'll try to time it so I press the button
for this floor after the elevator's already started."
Fracarro answered him in the same imperious tone she had used when she had asked him what he was