"Mike Resnick - Lucifer Jones 01- Adventures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

at the lost kingdom of the Malaloki.
Burley Rourke, a doctor specializing in diseases of the gullible.
Rosepetal Schultz, who differs from most ancient Egyptian queens in that she was
born twenty-three years ago in Brooklyn.
The Rodent, undersized killer of either sixteen or thirty-five men, who changed his
name from the Weasel for professional reasons.
Mr. Christian, officer aboard the good ship Dying Quail.
Bloomstoke, a tall, bronzed British nobleman who is living with a tribe of apes while
hiding from his creditors.
Neeyora, just your typical naked blonde white goddess, who tips the scales at four
hundred pounds, give or take an ounce.
Capturing Clyde Calhoun, who brings тАЩem back alive. Not intact, but alive.
Amen-hetep III, whose mummy carries a half-clad girl through the streets of Cairo
before checking in at Shepheard's Hotel.
Major Theodore Dobbins, a man with a taste for rich widows, who is also a
speculator in certain perishable commodities imported from far exotic China and
points east.
And our narrator, TheRight Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones : his religion is
a little something he and the Lord worked out between themselves one afternoon, his
tabernacle is the most prosperous brothel in British East Africa, and he has serious
disagreements with the authorities of fourteen different African nations over the finer
points of the law. On the other hand, he means well.

ADVENTURES
(1922-1926)

Chapter 1
THE WHITE GODDESS
I knew a real live vampire. It was in Africa about seventy years ago, and his name
was Herbie Miller. He didn't look much like a vampire, I supposeтАФwalked around in
khaki pants that he cut off above the knees, and his hair wasn't slicked down or
nothing. I can't say he was real fond of crosses, but daylight didn't bother him none,
and he had no problems walking over running water, except that he couldn't swim and
narrow bridges scared the hell out of him.
I don't know why he should have been so interested in me, especially considering that
I was a man of the cloth back then, but he was. When he wasn't trying to nab me in
the neck, which was pretty difficult inasmuch as poor Herbie was barely five feet tall
with his boots on, he kept coming up with crazy schemes about how I should go to the
local hospitalтАФnot Schweitzer's, but one you've probably never heard ofтАФand
borrow some blood, for which he promised to pay me in pounds or dollars or rupees
or whatever else he'd gotten off one of his more recent meals.
You know, I think about Herbie and some of the others I met, and I'd have to say that
even without the animalsтАФand I never did see all that many of them anyway, except
for the time I was an ivory poacherтАФAfrica was a pretty interesting place to be back
then. I had my flock and my tabernacle, and of course there was Herbie, who came
smack-dab between my little business excursions into opium and brothels, and there
were Long Schmidt and Short Schmidt, a pair of brothers who became gods, and there
was CapturinтАЩ Clyde Calhoun and a batch of others.
Africa was full of colorful folk like that in the old days. They called themselves
adventurers and explorers and hunters and missionaries, but what they mostly were