"Elgin,.Suzette.Haden.-.Star.Anchored.Star.Angered" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

"Sir," said the voice of the Amanuensis, "the Citizen Dean wishes to advise—"
"The Citizen Dean wishes to advise be damned!" The Dean's bellow cut over the computer like a buzz saw whipping through standing grain. "Either you see me, now, Alvin Wythllewyn, or—"
The Fish did not wait to see what the alternative to his compliance was going to be, although he felt a certain natural curiosity. At the sound of his name, which had not been uttered or written inside or outside TGIS in at least twenty-five years, he went stark white and slammed the communicator stud, shouting, "Send her in! Send her in!"
The door slid soundlessly open, and the Dean came in, smiling. "I thought that would do it," she said.
"Unfair!" said The Fish bitterly. "Really unfair, Citizen Dean."
"You should be flattered," she pointed out, "that I remember your name. It's been better than thirty years since you were a Student of mine, Alvin, and I've seen many many hundreds come and go in that time."
The Fish glared at her and motioned to the antique chair that faced his desk.
"Do please sit down, Citizen Dean," he said. "Please."
Shandalynne O'Halloran looked the chair over from the back, and then she walked around it and looked at it from several other angles, and her mouth puckered, along with her eyebrows.
"That chair," she said, "was carefully chosen to make whoever sits in it miserable. The back is too low, so that you can't lean back without it striking you right over the kidneys. The arms slant up, so you can't rest your elbows without making your shoulders ache. The seat slants down so that you get cramps in your legs. That's not a chair, Alvin, it's a torture instrument. Is it electric, too?"
"That chair cost fifty-seven deca-credits," said The Fish. "It deserves respect for its age and its long and faithful service, however odd it may be otherwise."
The Dean chuckled. "You always were a sneaky man, Alvin," she said, "and I see that you have not changed your ways. Fortunately for me, however, I deal with sneaky little men all the time."
She opened the pocket of her tunic, took out a small flat packet of dark blue plastic, pulled a tiny silver plug in one corner, watched serenely through the soft hissing of air, and then sat in the resulting chair. Even for an inflatable, it was elegant. And very comfortable.
"Now then," she said. "I want to talk to you."
The Fish waited, and she leaned back in her chair and smiled at him, and she waited.
"What about?"
"About one Citizen Coyote Jones," she said promptly, "who I hear is one of your TGIS men, and who appeared on my doorstep a few days back sporting a conservative loincloth, a wooden guitar, a bright red beard, and a veritable cornucopia of official directives which can easily be summarized as follows: Give This Man Anything He Wants and Don't Ask Questions."
"Hmmmmmm," said The Fish.
"It took me some time to find out who his chief was," she said.
"I'm glad to hear that."
"It didn't take me very long."
"Hmmmmmm," said the Fish again, and flashed his beautiful white teeth.
"Now," the Dean went on, "when this personage arrived to see me, I was informed that he was to be assisted in masquerading as a Student, on his way to the planet Freeway to do a dissertation comparing the effects of the Maklunite religion on various cultures with the effects of the Shavvy religion on the culture of Freeway specifically. I was not told why, but was given to understand that the fate of the universe et cetera, et cetera, hung upon the success of his mission."
"That," observed The Fish, "was something of an overstatement."
"Oh?"
"Well ... it was important, but we will not actually crumble into the void if he fails."
"If he fails to what?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said, if he fails to what? What precisely is this poor crippled gentleman supposed to be doing?"
"Crippled?" The Fish registered, for once, genuine amazement.
"Certainly. Your man's mind-deaf—didn't you even know that?"
"Crippled ... " The Fish thought of a time when Coyote Jones had faced an advancing group of three hundred and ten tanks, each manned by a suicide squad of Haxxite warriors, each armed with a nuclear warhead, and had needed only thirteen seconds to convince the whole bunch to ride docilely around in circles until their fuel was exhausted. And then he thought of the concept of Coyote as a cripple, and snickered softly.
"Alvin, are you listening to me or not?"
The Fish jumped slightly, and leaned toward her attentively.
"Of course," he said.
"I have been asking you, Alvin, what the man's mission is. A simple question."
"And one that you surely understand I cannot answer."
"Nonsense."
"My dear Citizen Dean," protested The Fish, "you can't expect me to divulge to you a secret mission of extreme importance and delicacy with possible intergalactic repercussions that—"
"Then," snapped the Dean, "you can expect me to divulge to the press that I have been pressured into taking part in a fraud, passing off a TGIS man as a Student of Religion, and that my own important and delicate conscience will no longer allow me to remain silent about it all. In fact, at this very moment I feel the pressure to confess creeping over me, Alvin ... irresistibly."
"Would you really do that?" demanded The Fish, pained. "Have you no sense of the propriety of things?"
She faced him stonily, tapping the edge of his desk with one finger.
"I'll have you assassinated," he ventured. "A little drug in the night, as you sit studying by your window ... The headlines will read 'Mysterious Disappearance of Venerable Dean Baffles Authorities.' "
The Dean snorted. "You couldn't get away with it," she said contemptuously. "Assassinate all the heads of government you like, but you try assassinating me, Alvin, and it will be your disappearance that baffles the authorities."
The Fish thought it over, and decided she was probably right.
"The publicity would be terrible," he mused.
"Alvin!" she said. "Talk, and stop all this silly posturing!"
People did not talk to The Fish like that, and she knew it, but he had no opportunity to say any of the things that immediately occurred to him, because she was way ahead of him.
"Ah, Citizen Director," she sighed, all charm and feathers, "you must forgive the eccentricities of an aged academician, unaccustomed to dealing with the outside world."
"You would tell on us, though," said The Fish.