"Robert A. Heinlein - To Sail Beyond the Sunset" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

unsure of herself.
(Perhaps I am too sensitive. But since my sesquicentennial I have been
disposed to check the mirror each morning, wondering.)
There was only one woman in this mob of intruders. She looked at me and
sniffed, which made me feel better.
Then I recalled something. When I was twelve, my father told me that I was
going to have lots of trouble with men. I said, ‚Father, you are out of your
veering mind. I’m not pretty. The boys don’t even throw snowballs at me.’
‚A little respect, please. No, you aren’t pretty. It’s the way you smell, my
darling daughter. You are going to have to bathe oftener . . . or some warm
night you will wind up raped and murdered.’
‚Why, I bathe every week! You know I do.’
‚In your case, that’s not enough. Mark my words.’
I did mark his words and learned that Father knew what he was talking about.
My body odour when I’m well and happy is much like that of a cat in heat. But
today I was not happy. First that dead man scared me and then those
bleeping machines made me angry... which adds up to a different sort of
stink. A tabby cat not in heat can walk right through a caucus of toms and
they will ignore her. As I was being ignored.
They stripped the top sheet off my erstwhile bedmate. The house physician
looked over the cadaver without touching it, then looked more closely at that
horrid red puddle - leant down, sniffed it, then made my skin crawl by dipping
a finger into the slop and tasting it.
‚Try it, Adolf. See what you think.’
His colleague (I assumed that he was another physician) also tasted the
bloody mess. ‚Heinz.’
‚No. Skinner’s.’
‚With all due respect, Dr. Ridpath, you have ruined your palate with that
cheap gin you guzzle. Heinz. Skinner’s catsup has more salt. Which kills the
delicate tomato flavour. Which you can’t taste, because of your evil habits.’
‚Ten thousand, Dr Weisskopf? Even money.’
‚You’re on. What do you place as the cause of death, sir?’
‚Don’t try to trap me, Doctor. „Cause of death“ is your job:
‚His heart stopped.?’
‚Brilliant, Doctor, brilliant! But why did it stop?’
In the case of judge Hardacres, for some years the question has been: What
keeps him alive? Before I express an opinion I want to place him on a slab
and slice him up. I may have been hasty; he may turn out not to have had a
heart.’
‚Are you going to cut him up to learn something, or to make certain he stays
dead?’
‚Noisy in here, isn’t it? Do you release the body? I’ll have it taken downtown.’
‚Hand me a form nine-oh-four and I’ll drop it. Just keep the meat out of sight
of our guests. Grand Hotel Augustus does not have guests dying on its
premises.’
‚Dr Ridpath, I was handling such things discreetly before you slid through that
diploma mill.’
‚I’m sure you were, Adolf. Lawn ball later?’
‚Thank you, Eric. Yes.’
‚And dinner after; Zenobia will be expecting you. I’ll pick you up at the