"Jack Vance - Assault on a City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

"Who's the man?"
"What's it to you?"
"You say you know who I am."
Hernanda gave her head a half-fearful, half-defiant jerk of assent. "He
shouldn't have done itтАФbut I'm not saying anything."
"You'll either tell me or the police."
"No! He'd cut my ears; he'd sell me to the gunkers."
"He won't get the chance. You can either tell me now in secret, or the
police will take you in as his accomplice."
"In secret?"
"Yes. He won't know where I got his name."
"You swear this?"
"I do."
Hernanda came a timid step forward. She picked up the photograph,
glanced at it, threw it contemptuously back down on the table. "Bodred
Histledine. He lives in Fulchock: 663-20-99. He works in the spaceyards."
"Bodred Histledine." Waldo noted the name and address. "Why did he
do what he did?"
 Hernanda gave her head a meditative strike. "He's a strange man.
Sometimes he's like a little boy, sad and sweet; then sometimes he's a
beast of the jungle. Have you noticed his eyes? They're like the eyes of a
tiger."
"That may be. But why did he victimize me?"
Hernanda's own eyes flashed. "Because of the girl you were with! He's a
crazy man!"
Waldo gave a grunt of bitter amusement. He inspected Hernanda
thoughtfully; in her turn she looked at him. A patrician for certain: one of
those Cloudhaven types.
"He's always up at the Blue Lamp Tavern," said Hernanda. "That's his
headquarters. He's on probation, you know. Just yesterday the detectives
warned him." Hernanda, relaxing, had become limpid and charming; she
came forward to the table.
Waldo looked her over without expression. "What did they warn him
for?"
"Consorting with gunkers."
"I see. Anything else you care to tell me?"
"No." Hernanda now was almost arch. She came around the table. "You
won't tell him that you saw me?"
"No, definitely not." Waldo once again caught a breath of that hateful
odor. Rolling his eyes up and around, he turned and left the apartment.



7
Entering the Blue Lamp Tavern, Alice halted and peered through the
gloom. For possibly the first time in her brash young life she felt the living
presence of time. Upon that long black mahogany bar men of ten centuries
had rested their elbows. The old wood exhaled vapors of the beer and
spirits they had quaffed; their ghosts were almost palpable and their
conversations hung in the gloom under the age-blackened ceiling. Alice