JК
Crashlander :: Нивен Ларри
Страница: 182 из 199It was darker down there than I was used to. Pacifica citizens must like their underwater gloom, I thought.
Two floors down, an open fast-food center: wasn't that where I'd seen her? She was gone now. I'd seen only a face, and I could have been wrong. At least she'd never spot me, not before I was much closer.
But where was she? Dressed how? Employee or customer? It was midmorning: she couldn't be on lunch break. Customer, then. Only, Shashters kept poor track of time.
Three floors down, the sports department. Good enough. I rode down the escalator. I'd buy a spear gun or another stunner, shove everything into the bag that came with it. Then I could start window shopping for faces.
The Sports Department aisles were pleasantly wide. Most of,what it sold was fishing gear, a daunting variety. There was skiing equipment too. And hunting, it looked like: huge weapons built for hands bigger than a baseball mitt. The smallest was a fat tube as long as my forearm, with a grip no bigger than a kzinti kitten's hand. Oh, sure, kzinti just love going to humans for their weapons. Maybe the display was there to entertain human customers.
The clerks were leaving me alone to browse. Customs differ. What the tanj was that?
Two kzinti in the aisle, spaced three yards apart, hissing the Hero's Tongue at each other. A handful of human customers watched in some amusement. There didn't seem to be danger there. One wore what might be a loose dark blue swimsuit with a hole for the tail. The other (sleeveless brown tunic) took down four yards of disassembled fishing rod. A kzinti clerk?
The corner of my eye caught a clerk's hands (human) opening the case and reaching in for that smaller tube, with a grip built for a kzin child. Or a man — My breath froze in my throat. I was looking into Feather's horrible ARM weapon. I looked up into the clerk's face.
It came out as a whisper. «No, Sharrol, no no no. It's me. It's Beowulf.»
She didn't fire. But she was pale with terror, her jaw set like rock, and the black tube looked at the bridge of my nose.
I eased two inches to the right, very slowly, to put myself between the tube and the kzin cop. That wasn't a swimsuit he was wearing: it was the same sleeve less, legless police uniform I'd seen at breakfast.
We were eye to eye. The whites showed wide around her irises. I said, «My face. Look at my face. Under the beard. It's Bey, love. I'm a foot shorter. Remember?»
She remembered. It terrified her.
«I wouldn't fit. The cavity was built for Carlos.
Two floors down, an open fast-food center: wasn't that where I'd seen her? She was gone now. I'd seen only a face, and I could have been wrong. At least she'd never spot me, not before I was much closer.
But where was she? Dressed how? Employee or customer? It was midmorning: she couldn't be on lunch break. Customer, then. Only, Shashters kept poor track of time.
Three floors down, the sports department. Good enough. I rode down the escalator. I'd buy a spear gun or another stunner, shove everything into the bag that came with it. Then I could start window shopping for faces.
The Sports Department aisles were pleasantly wide. Most of,what it sold was fishing gear, a daunting variety. There was skiing equipment too. And hunting, it looked like: huge weapons built for hands bigger than a baseball mitt. The smallest was a fat tube as long as my forearm, with a grip no bigger than a kzinti kitten's hand. Oh, sure, kzinti just love going to humans for their weapons. Maybe the display was there to entertain human customers.
The clerks were leaving me alone to browse. Customs differ. What the tanj was that?
Two kzinti in the aisle, spaced three yards apart, hissing the Hero's Tongue at each other. A handful of human customers watched in some amusement. There didn't seem to be danger there. One wore what might be a loose dark blue swimsuit with a hole for the tail. The other (sleeveless brown tunic) took down four yards of disassembled fishing rod. A kzinti clerk?
The corner of my eye caught a clerk's hands (human) opening the case and reaching in for that smaller tube, with a grip built for a kzin child. Or a man — My breath froze in my throat. I was looking into Feather's horrible ARM weapon. I looked up into the clerk's face.
It came out as a whisper. «No, Sharrol, no no no. It's me. It's Beowulf.»
She didn't fire. But she was pale with terror, her jaw set like rock, and the black tube looked at the bridge of my nose.
I eased two inches to the right, very slowly, to put myself between the tube and the kzin cop. That wasn't a swimsuit he was wearing: it was the same sleeve less, legless police uniform I'd seen at breakfast.
We were eye to eye. The whites showed wide around her irises. I said, «My face. Look at my face. Under the beard. It's Bey, love. I'm a foot shorter. Remember?»
She remembered. It terrified her.
«I wouldn't fit. The cavity was built for Carlos.