"Timothy Zahn - Angelmass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

For what she needed now, they would do nicely.

"Oh, come on, Kail," one of the others said into the silence, giving a little snort of derision. The

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Angelmass

proper reaction, Chandris thought scornfully, only about a year too late. "Look at her luggage, for
gritty'sake. Probably paid for her ticket with table tips."

The third girl giggled. "Yeah," she said slyly. "Or else a more personal kind of service work."

She gave a warbling whistle, a pretty good imitation of the come-on hookers sometimes used in the
Barrio, and all three laughed. "Girls, girls," the first admonished, her voice mock-severe. "I'm sure
we've got her all wrong. I'll bet she's just so incredibly smart that she doesn't even care that she
dresses like a sfudd. Probably gonna major in catalytic nuclear drive or politics or something equally
frizzly."

Chandris kept quiet, fighting back the awful temptation to turn around and pull the little puff-head's
face off by the roots. One of the girls whispered something else, eliciting another mass giggle, and
the conversation resumed where it had left off. With Chandris pointedly excluded.

She stayed in the room another half hour, pretending to arrange and rearrange her meager wardrobe
in her locker and enduring the snide comments not quite directed her direction... and by the time she
left, she had it down pat. All of it: every repetitious bit of slangy, every silly gesture, every bad joke,
every word of gossip and school talk and clothes talk.

Everything that would let her pass herself off as one of them.

For a while she just wandered, poking around the edges of her section's public areasтАФdining rooms,
lounges, recreation rooms and the likeтАФand just generally getting a feel for the ship. The corridors
themselves were pretty well deserted, most of the passengers who were out and about seated in the
lounges getting a head start on their socializing. The delicate aromas of alcohol and other traditional
reeks tugged at her, and more than once she was sorely tempted to join in and put off her exploring
until morning. It wasn't like she was short on timeтАФthey'd told her when she bought the ticket that it
would take the Xirrus six or seven days to get to Lorelei.

But she resisted the temptation. Long experience had taught her that mass confusion was the best
cover for scoring tracks; and the day when twelve shuttles ungorged themselves of new passengers
was probably going to be as confused as things got up here.

Besides which, if she didn't get busy and make other arrangements, she was going to be stuck
spending at least one night with those puff-headed snobs back in her room.

From the different sizes of staterooms and cabins that the big floorplan had shown, it had been pretty
obvious that the upper-class sections were the ones furthest forward. Directly behind them had been
a narrow blank area; behind that the middle-class cabins, another blank area, and finally Chandris's
own lower-class section. Another blank area ran up through the core of the ship, connecting with the
ones separating the passenger sections.