"Rajnar Vajra - Standing Firm on the Pipette Line" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vajra Rajnar)

he'd been hurt.
"Pick him _up_, damn it!" I urged Little Jerry Connelly, the guard
closest to our victim. "He'll get trampled in this crowd! And," I immediately
added in a voice pitched for Connelly's ear alone, "think how _colorful_ this
is going to look on the newswebs." Jerry was my newest and smallest protector,
a recently transplanted Virginian scarcely the size of King Kong, but he was
bright enough to be a member of a certain rather exclusive club.
"Yes sir! I see your point, sir."
I was relieved to note that the reporter, set back on his feet, was
merely dazed and was neither bleeding (externally) nor threatening lawsuits
(immediately). I glared at my security team. You don't treat a voter like that
-- particularly one with a camera.
Harrowing. And inside City Hall wasn't much better. Reporters weren't
the only ones with unanswerable questions.
So when I finally opened the door to my private office, my nerves were
thoroughly shot and I thought, for one relatively happy second, that someone
had inconsiderately parked their dog atop my desk.
Then the smell hit my nostrils.
The sheer bulk of the German shepherd-sized beast had tricked me. I'd
never seen a Majuscule in the flesh and hadn't realized, viscerally, how much
bigger they were than ordinary Norway rats (and Norways can grow to nearly
twenty inches long including the scaly tail).
But no dog (I hope) had ever emitted such unfortunate odors. As I
understand it, Majuscules can adjust their "command" scents to reprogram the
instincts of normal rats, the Minuscules. That's how they can give their




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servants such specific instructions. But to me the stench made pure ammonia
smell heavenly by comparison.
No, this was no dog. No dog ever sat back on its haunches like that,
lifting a hand in silent greeting, a _capable_-looking hand with a fully
opposable thumb. Majuscules run on all fours but they usually walk upright.
Horribly, the intercom was also on my desk. To use it I'd have to get
within inches of the super-rodent. Avoid threatening movements, I advised
myself, wondering what a Majuscule would find threatening....
The beast studied my timorous approach while I studied the beast. I
don't know about him, but I was prepared to run like hell at any sign of
trouble. Beady red eyes, reminding me of the ready lights on the cameras
outside, smoldered when I finally reached the desk and pushed the button;
fortunately the animal kept perfectly still.
"Dottie?" I asked my office secretary, my voice quivering like Junket
in the 2010 Boston earthquake. "Can you please have someone bring in the
Rattus translator? _Right_ away?"
"Certainly, Mr. Mayor." A translator was, of course, built into the
Pipette Line system; but we kept a portable one on hand in the unlikely case
one of the Rat Lords suddenly dropped in.
"We'll have a translating device in just a minute," I said to my