"Foster, Alan Dean - Alien Nation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

"Slagtown. Wonder what this part of L.A. used to be called before the
Newcomers moved in?"
"Don't ask me. I ain't no history buff."
Tuggle turned the slugmobile up Broadway, now home to all-night liquor
stores and cheap parlor entertainments. The theaters were nearly all closed
down, there as yet being no films directed specifically at the Newcomer
communities. Hollywood was still working that one out. But a couple of
places played the usual, struggling to draw enough Newcomer patrons to stay
in business. No comedies. Human
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comedy was incomprehensible to all but the most sophisticated aliens. The
majority preferred action-adventure stories and, oddly enough, love stories.
Alien housewives were regular watchers of the morning TV soaps.
Newcomer hookers paraded near the theaters and restaurants, plying their
trade. Not all Newcomer habits were incomprehensible. The women were
elegant and impossibly tall, Sykes mused. He spoke as he stared.
"Wonder if their plumbing's the same?"
"It is." Tuggle spoke in his usual monotone, without taking his eyes off
the road. Sykes eyed him curiously.
As he was preparing to ask the inevitable next question a long, lowrider
station wagon pulled up alongside the slugmobile, grumbling through its
chopped 427 Chevy engine. It peeled off fast at the next intersection, but
for all his bravado the driver was careful to remain well within the posted
speed limit. He was giving the cop car the vehicular finger, but masking it
with caution. Tuggle cruised on, past alien eateries and specialty shops.
Slow night, Sykes thought. Just the usual Slagtown depression hanging like
steady rain over the storefronts and dark apartment buildings. Even the
bums and thugs moved slowly, tiredly here. He made a quick search of the
dash, locating his cup of coffee amidst the rubble of two weeks' worth of
collected embalmed fast food by the steamed circle it made against the
windshield. Tuggle was chewing on his lower lip as if trying to decide
whether or not to say something. Sykes knew his partner would get around to
whatever it was eventually. You didn't ride with a man for nine years
without getting to know him pretty well.
It wasn't what Sykes expected to hear, however, when Tuggle finally spoke
up. Nor was it a subject he wished to discuss.
"So, you gonna go, or you not gonna go?" his partner asked him tersely.
Sykes considered a response as he watched Tuggle expertly scoop up and
begin noshing on a triangle of limp, lukewarm pizza. It was a delicate
balancing act: driving, eating, and somehow simultaneously managing not to
decorate his suit with cheese drippings or tomato sauce. Sykes couldn't
have
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done it. No matter how hard he tried he always ended up wearing full
evidence of his previous days' meals on his pants and shirt. Tuggle never
said a word. He didn't have to. The looks he gave his partner's attire
after such assaults were eloquent enough.
"How can I go?" he replied, trying to make it sound offhand and