"Robert A. Heinlein - Podkayne of Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

is no headache of mine, I am happy to say, for Clark is quite enough
maturing trauma for one girl’s adolescence. By the time the twins are a
current problem I expect to be long gone and far away.
Interlude




Hi, Pod.
So you think I can’t read your worm tracks.


5
A lot you know about me! Poddy-oh, excuse me, “Captain” Podkayne Fries, I
mean, the famous Space Explorer and Master of Men-Captain Poddy dear,
you probably will never read this because it wouldn’t occur to you that I not
only would break your “code” but also write comments in the big, wide
margins you leave.
Just for the record, Sister dear, I read Old Anglish just as readily as I do
System Ortho. Anglish isn’t all that hard and I learned it as soon as I found
out that a lot of books I wanted to read had never been translated. But it
doesn’t pay to tell eveiything you know, or somebody comes along and tells
you to stop doing whatever it is you are doing. Probably your older sister.
But imagine calling a straight substitution a “code”! Poddy, if you had actually
been able to write Old Martian, it would have taken me quite a lot longer. But
you can’t. Shucks, even Dad can’t write it without stewing over it and he
probably knows more about Old Martian than anyone else in the System.
But you won’t crack my code-because I haven’t any.
Try looking at this page under ultraviolet light-a sun lamp, for example.

II




Oh, Unspeakables!
Dirty ears! Hangnails! Snel-frockey! Spit! WE AREN’T GOING!
At first I thought that my brother Clark had managed one of his more
charlatanous machinations of malevolent legerdemain. But fortunately (the
only fortunate thing about the whole miserable mess) I soon perceived that it
was impossible for him to be in fact guilty no matter what devious
subversions roil his id. Unless he has managed to invent and build in secret a
time machine, which I misdoubt he would do if he could . . . nor am I
prepared to offer odds that he can’t. Not since the time he rewired the
delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks and charge them to
my code number without (so far as anyone could ever prove) disturbing the
company’s seal on the control box.
We’ll never know how he did that one, because, despite the fact that the
company offered to Forgive All and pay a cash bonus to boot if only he would
please tell them how he managed to beat their unbeatable seal-despite this,