"Jack Vance - Meet Miss Universe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

Miss Universe backed away, her massive thorax vibrating as if in startled
affirmation.
"Well look here," Tony said. "You see that man with the pink face, in the
light brown suit? He still smells the way I did. It was just temporary with
me. With him it's permanent."
Clydell rapped the glass jovially. "What's going on in there?"
Tony and the interpreter came out. Miss Universe lumbered to the door of
the vivarium.
The interpreter beckoned to Cly-dell. "Miss Universe wants to smell you."
"Sure," said Clydell breezily. "First I apply the old equalizerтАФ so I don't
smell Miss Mel" He sucked on his cigar, and letting a fine plume of smoke
escape through his nostrils, approached Miss Uni-verse.
She rumbled and banged Clydell on the back.
The interpreter said, "Miss Uni-verse said the wrong thing. She don't want
Tony; She wants you."
Tony nodded thoughtfully. "I thought she had made a mistake."
"I don't understand this!" cried Clydell.
"Looks like you're in for a trip to Mel," said one of the reporters.
"It's only a month, old man," said Tony.
"You and your fancy ideas!" Said Clydell savagely.
I'll keep the office going, Har-deman."
Miss Universe's clumsy arm cir-cled Clydell's waist. The interpreter said,
"She is ready to go."
"But I'm not ready," cried Cly-dell. "I'm not even packed, I need clothes,
my shaving equipment!"
"It's not cold on Mel. Especially inside the hive. You don't need clothes."
"My affairs, my business!"
"She says she wants to go now. ImmediatelyтАФthis minute."
Tony smiled, remembering how badly he had been tempted to light the cigar
he'd borrowed from Cly-dell only a moment before. If he had not jostled
Clydell and return-ed" the noxious weed to that in-veterate smoker's pocket
where would he be now? In Clydell's shoes, undoubtedly.
Tony's smile broadened. A fast thinker and, a deviously subtle one was he!
He'd even remembered Clydell's odd way with cigars. Clydell carried four or
five, usually, in his vest pocket but just before light-ing one he had a
peculiar habit of transferring the weed to his loose, easily accessible jacket
pocket, a vantage point or midway stop, so to speak, from whence he could the
more readily pop it into his mouth.
On her home planet Miss Uni-verse quite possibly reveled in the rich
bouquet of decaying vegetable matter in lieu of champagne. Sure-ly only
decaying vegetation on an alien world could smell quite as rank as one of
Clydell's cigars. Or possibly Miss Universe had even more decadent tastes,
from a Ter-restrial point of view, and feasted onтАФ
Tony shuddered. Well, he might as well think it. Protein detritusтАФ
nitrogenous organic compounds yielding amino acids, in a state of advanced
decay. Dried death.
Tony moved up close to the cage, the grin once more on his face. "Good-bye,
old man!" he shouted. "Have a pleasant trip!"