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

Bo looked around the room. "I don't know as I like all this company.
Everybody's got to go. I can't concentrate."
"I'm not going," said Waldo. "You three wait in the hall. There'll be
more work for you after a bit."
"Well, don't beat me any more," whined Raulf. "I didn't do anything."
"Quit sniveling!" Bo snarled. "Fire up that camera. This isn't quite like I
planned, but if it's not good, we'll do a retake."
"Wait!" said Alice. "One thing more. Watch my hands. Are you
watching?" She stood erect, and performed a set of apparently purposeless
motions. She halted, held her palms toward Bo and Waldo, and each held
a small mechanism. From the object in her right hand burst a gush of
dazzling light, pulsating ten times per second; the mechanism in the left
hand vented an almost solid tooth-chattering mass of sound: a throbbing
scream in phase with the light: erreek erreek erreek! Waldo and Bo
flinched and sagged back, their brain circuits overloaded and rendered
numb. The gun dropped from Waldo's hand. Prepared for the event, Alice
was less affected. She placed the beacon on the table, picked up the gun.
Waldo, Bo and Raulf staggered and lurched, their brain-waves now
surging at dis-orientation frequency.
Alice, her face taut with concentration, left the room. In the hall she
sidled past Waldo's three hireling thugs, who stood indecisively, and so
gained the street. From a nearby public telephone, she called the police,
who dropped down from the sky two minutes later. Alice explained the
circumstances; the police in short order brought forth a set of sullen
captives.
Alice watched as they were loaded into the conveyance. "Goodbye,
Waldo. Goodbye, Bo. At least you evaded your beating. I don't know what's
going to happen to you, but I can't extend too much sympathy, because
you've both been rascals."
Waldo asked sourly, "Do you make as much trouble as this wherever
you go?"
Alice decided that the question had been asked for rhetorical effect and
required no exact or accurate reply; she merely waved and watched as
Waldo, Bo, Raulf Dido and the three thugs were wafted aloft and away.
 Alice arrived back at the aerie halfway through the afternoon, to find
that her father had completed his business. "I was hoping you'd get back
early," said Merwyn Tynnott, "so that we could leave tonight. Did you have
a good day?"
"It's been interesting," said Alice. "The teaching processes are
spectacular and effective, but I wonder if by presenting events so
categorically they might not stifle the students' imaginations?"
"Possible. Hard to say."
"Their point of view is urbanite, naturally. Still, the events speak for
themselves, and I suspect that the student of history falls into urbanite
doctrine through social pressure."
"Very likely so. Social pressure is stronger than logic."
"I had lunch at the Blue Lamp Tavern, a spooky old place."
"Yes. I know it well. It's a back-eddy of ancient times, and also
something of an underworld hangout. Dozens of spacemen have
disappeared from the Blue Lamp."