"Spider Robinson - The End of the Painbow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

demanded an explanation. Tanya's husband, Isham, who was getting maybe one word in three,
understood that smile, at least, and began to be visibly alarmed. His wife's smile told him as plain as print
that she planned to do something drastic to someone, soon, and he wasn't 100 percent sure that it wasn't
him. He'd have paled if he'd been equipped for it.
Which meant there was no time to lose.
 "Hey, Naggeneen," I hollered, "your father was a Firbolg, and your mother was a fairy!"
A screech of rage came from the rafters above our heads. "It's a damnable libel! The man was an
honest respectable cluricaune, just like meself!"
We all stared upward. Everyone but Long-Drink and Tanya and I was startled to see a withered little
old man, three feet tall, perched in the crotch of a rafter. He wore a green coat with forked tails, a tall
green cap in a state of sublime disrepair, a leather apron, pale green stockings, and glossy black high-heel
shoes with silver buckles, nearly all of this obscured by a great cascade of snowy white beard which
made his angry cheeks seem even redder. He was smoking a pipe like a white check-mark, and at the
moment the bowl was glowing nearly as brightly as his bloodshot eyes. But redder than coat or cheeks or
eyes or pipe-bowl, or all of them put together, was his lordly nose. He was toweringly drunk, shaking his
fist at me with such force that he was near to toppling from his perch.
"Come on up beside me and say that, ya scut, if you're man enough!" he thundered. "Ya whey-faced
ridiculous git of a nearsighted merrow and some kind of perverted eel, I'll use yer elongated spine for a
homemade accordion! I'll put yez to bed with a mattock, I will! Well, what's it to be?" Four or five
seconds of extremely total silence ensued. I used them trying to think of the best way to set things up for
Tanya.
But it was Long-Drink who solved the problem. Actually, the solution suggested itself. The Drink and
I both knew exactly what the reaction of the rest of the gang at Mary's Place to this apparition was going
to be; we could both predict almost word for word what someone was going to say, any second now.
So Long-Drink said it first.
"Oh, is that all it is? A leprechaun?"
The little old gent let out a shriek of inarticulate rage, thrust his pipe between his teeth, and leaped
tipsily from his perch, aiming for Long-Drink's head.
Halfway there, in midair, with every eye on him, he disappearedтАФ
тАФand Long-Drink began doing an imitation of the villain in the last act of an Invisible Man movie,
snapping his head from side to side and fanning air
"Now, Tanya," I said.

PART TWO: THE CLURICAUNE

But she was already in motion. Tanya's not awful fast, but she's got a whole lot of quick. She had her
jewelryтАФtwo bracelets of a ferrous nature, joined by a small but sturdy chainтАФalready in her left hand;
as her right closed and held on empty air a foot from Long-Drink, she fumbled briefly and closed one of
the cuffs around a column of equally empty air, only inches from the Drink's throat. She shifted her grip to
that air, let go with her right hand, and grabbed some more air, on the other side of Long-Drink's neck.
With a grunt of effort, she bent it away from him and around in an arc, into the embrace of the second
cuff. "Cushlamachree," the little old man's voice roared. Both cuffs promptly plunged toward the floor
as if heavily weightedтАФand then rose skyward like a rocket, spraying sparks and smoke, lifting Tanya a
few inches off the ground for a moment. She hung on like a summer cold, dangling from the apex of a V
made of handcuff chain, her heels off the floor, a rain of Gaelic curses showering on her head.
As I yelled, "Get her!" Isham was moving. A little large for a heavyweight, he was short on quick but
long on fast; he reached his wife in moments and added his weight to hers, while trying to climb up her
and get a grip between her hands. Doc Webster arrived just then, freeing Ish to go up for the jumpshot.
Between them they managed to wrestle the astonishingly lively pair of handcuffs back to about chest
levelтАФwhereupon the little old bearded fellow reappeared within the iron bracelets, finished the