"Fritz Leiber - The Number of the Beast" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

Next.”

“Hlilav the Antarean multibrach. Kept gently waving his tentacles all through the interrogation—I thought
he was trying to hypnotize me! Then it occurred to me he might be talking in code, but the interpreter said
no. At the end, h& gives a long insulting whistle, like some shameless swish. Whistle didn’t signify
anything either, the inter-preter said, beyond a polite wish for my serenity.

“Third customer was Fa the Rigelian composite. Took off a limb—real, of course, not artificial—and
kept fid-dling with it while I shot questions at him. I could hardly keep my mind on what I was
saying—expected bun to take his head off next! He did that too, just as he started back to his cell.”

“Telepaths can surely be exasperating,” the Old Lieu-tenant agreed. “I always had great trouble in
keeping in mind what a boring business a vocal interview must be to them—very much as if a man, quite
capable of speech, should insist on using a pencil and paper to conduct a conversation with you, with
perhaps the -further proviso ,that you print your remarks stylishly. Your fourth sus-pect, Jim?”

“Hrohrakak the Polarian centipedal. He reared up in a great question-mark bend when I addressed
him—looked very much like a giant cobra covered with thick black fur. Kept chattering to himself too,
very low—interpreter said he was saying over and over again, ‘Oh, All-father, when will this burden be
lifted from me?’ Halfway through, he readies out a little black limb to Donovan to give him what looks
like a pretty pink billiard ball.” “Oh, naughty, naughty,” the Old Leiutenant observed, shaking his head
while he smiled. “So these are your four suspects, Jim? The four rather gaudy racehorses of whom you
must back one?”

“They are. Each of them had opportunity. Each of them has a criminal reputation and might well have
been hired to do the murder—either by extremists in the Arcturian war party or by some other alien
organization hostile to Earth—such as the League of the Beasts with its pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo.”

“I don’t agree with you about the League, but don’t for-get our own bloody-minded extremists,” the
Old Lieu-tenant reminded him. “There are devils among us too, Jim.”

“True, Sean. But whoever paid for this crime, any one of the four might have been his agent. For to
complete the problem and tie it up in a Gordian knot a yard thick, each one of my suspects has recently
and untraceably received a large sum of money—enough so that, in each case, it might well have paid for
murder.”

Leaning forward the Old Lieutenant said, “So? Tell me about that, Jim.”

“Well, you know the saying that the price of a being’s

fife anywhere in the Galaxy is one thousand of whatever

happens to be the going unit of big money. And as you

know, it’s not too bad a rule of thumb. In this case, the
unit is gold martians, which are neither gold nor backed

by Mar’s bitter little bureaucracy, but—“

“I know! You’ve only minutes left, Jim. What were fee exact amounts?” .