"Mike Resnick - Lucifer Jones - A Jaguar Never Changes Its Stripes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

A Jaguar Never Changes Its Stripes: A Lucifer Jones story by
Mike Resnick
Part One
IтАЩm a city boy at heart. IтАЩve heard others sing the praises and charms of living in the wide open spaces,
but games of chance and obliging women of quality just ainтАЩt in abundance out in the wilderness, and of
course my callingтАУbringing the Word of the Lord to all the unwashed and godless heathen of the
worldтАУrequires me to go to where the sinners all congregate.

Which is why I find it puzzling that I spent so much of my young manhood being lost in the bush. There
are glittering capitols on every land mass I ever been on, just filled to overflowing with works of art, many
of which are called Fifi and Bubbles, but it seems that for every hour of heavenly rapture I could snatch
with one of тАШem I spent days and weeks getting et alive by six-legged critters and sharing my lunch with
no-legged ones.

So I probably shouldnтАЩt have been too surprised that a couple of days after taking my leave of old
Harvey Bunta, his daughter Merry, and a couple of trillion army ants, I decided I was about as
thoroughly lost as IтАЩd ever been, and that is mighty thorough.

My sense of direction has stopped me from ever wandering as far as Mars or Venus, but beyond that it
ainтАЩt been all that much of a help. The only things IтАЩd seen in two days besides them what flies and them
what slithers were a pair of lovelorn tapirs what was absolutely shameless and had the kind of stamina
you could only wish for in a horse what runs in them super-long six-day races across the desert. I
couldnтАЩt remember which fruits were good eating and which turned you into wormfood, so I settled for
eating grass, which is kind of like eating salad without the tomatoes and the dressing.

Finally I came upon a river. I figgered at least IтАЩd finally have some fish for dinner, but the alligators and
anacondas what lived there werenтАЩt real keen on sharing. Every time IтАЩd reach into the water to grab a
fish, up would come an alligator intent on grabbing a preacher. Finally I found a rope some native had left
lying around, and I attached a thorn to serve as a hook, and I stuck a worm on the end of it and tossed it
in the water, and sure enough, a twenty-foot anaconda swum by and grabbed it. Well, I pulled on my
end and he pulled on his, and long about the time heтАЩd drug me waist deep into the water and a bunch of
his friends and relations starting heading our way I figgered that raw anaconda probably didnтАЩt taste as
good to me as raw person did to him, and since he had the better motivation on his side I let go of the
rope and climbed ashore just before his ladyfriend could give me a great big hug.

I sat on the shore for a few hours, trying to figger out how to con one the alligators out of a fish dinner
when suddenly a small canoe came around a bend of the river and a little guy wearing nothing but a
loincloth and a couple of bones in his hair paddled up to the shore and shot me a friendly smile and
signaled me to hop in. I figgered I couldnтАЩt be no hungrier and no loster anywhere else than I was here,
so I accepted his invite and a minute later we were floating down the middle of the river.

WeтАЩd gone a couple of miles, and the river widened out some, and suddenly he stopped paddling and
looked over the side of the boat, and then quick as lightning he reached into the water and pulled out a
fish, which he tossed onto the floor of the boat. It started flopping around, and he cracked it on the head
with his paddle, and then it just lay there, all quiet and peaceful-like.

I waited until he was busy paddling again, and then grabbed the fish and took a few bites, spitting out a
couple of bones and swallowing the rest for some much-needed roughage. I didnтАЩt forget my new-found
benefactor neither, and left him the head, the tail, and one dorsal fin.