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

"Does this mean you're not going to eat us?" asked Rourke.
"Eat you?" said Kitunga, and laughed. "No. No. Not eat."
"Then what do you want from us?" said Rourke.
_"Chumbi-chumbi,"_ said Kitunga.
"Sounds like some kind of ritual," said Rourke. "What the
devil does it mean?"
Kitunga flashed every tooth in his head. "Make babies," he
said. He shook our hands again, spat in the fire, and began
walking away.
"Hold on a minute!" I said, jumping up. "What do you mean,
make babies?"
"Make babies," said Kitunga solemnly. With the forefinger of
one hand and the fist of the other, he gave us a graphic and
vigorous analogy.
"You mean you want us to make babies with some naked black
barbarians?" I demanded.
"Not black," said Kitunga. "Like you."
"You mean a white woman?" asked Rourke.
"Yes, yes," said Kitunga. "White woman."
As you can imagine, we immediately fell to discussing this
development between ourselves while Kitunga ambled off to sleep
with his men. Back in those days there were lots of tales making
the rounds about white women who were priestesses or goddesses of
heathen black tribes, but while they sounded good over a lonely
campfire or in the bar of the Norfolk Hotel, they were about as
likely to be true as our lost Zulu gold mine.
"The way I see it, Brother Rourke," I said after considerable
thought, "is that these here savages have killed some hunting
party except for a white woman, whom they've doubtless got chained
to a post in their village, and whom they probably ravish by the
hour."
"I don't know that I'm real pleased about this turn of
events, Saint Luke," said Rourke. "Oh, I'll admit that it beats
being eaten, but I suppose she's going to want us to rescue her."
It _was_ a kind of gloomy thought at that, and I said as
much. "Still," I added, "it's the Christian thing to do."
"Maybe you could tell her to turn the other cheek, a
fascinating thought in itself," said Rourke.
"Well, I suppose we'd at least better make sure she _wants_
to be rescued before we go about upsetting Kitunga," I suggested.
"Right," agreed Rourke. "A person can get used to anything in
time. Maybe she's gotten to where she likes being ravished."
"A telling point," I agreed.
We fell silent for a while, and then an interesting notion
hit me.
"Brother Rourke," I said, "I think we've been looking at this
situation all wrong."
"How so?" he asked.
"Why should a bunch of healthy young bucks want our help
ravishing a prisoner?"