"George R. R. Martin - Manna From Heaven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

purple.
Tolly Mune slid awkwardly into the seat beside Tuf. “He’s telepathic, too,” she said cheerfully, “just like
yours.”
“Indeed,” said Haviland Tuf. Dax was stiff and angry in his lap. He hissed again.
“Jack here was the way I saved the other cats,” Tolly Mune said. Her homely face took on a look of
reproach. “You said you were leaving me five years of catfood.”
“For two cats, madam,” said Tuf. “Obviously, sixteen animals consume more than Doubt and Ingratitude
alone.” Dax edged closer, bared his teeth, bristled.
“I had problems when the stuff ran out. Given our food shortfalls, I had to justify wasting calories on
vermin.”
“Perhaps you might have considered steps to limit your feline reproduction,” Tuf said. “Such a strategy
would undoubtedly have yielded results. Thus your home could have served as an educational and
sobering illustration of S’uthlamese problems, in microcosm as it were, and the solutions thereof.”
“Sterilization?” Tolly Mune said. “That’s anti-life, Tuf. Out. I had a better idea. I described Dax to certain
friends—biotechs, cybertechs, you know—and they made me a familiar of my own, worked up from
cells taken from Ingratitude.”
“How appropriate,” said Tuf.
She smiled. “Blackjack’s almost two years old. He’s been so useful I’ve been given a food allowance for
the others. He’s helped my political career no end, too.”
“I have no doubt,” said Tuf. “I note that he does not appear discomfitted by gravity.”
“Not Blackjack. These days they need me downstairs a hell of a lot more than I’d like, and Jack goes
with me. Everywhere.”
Dax hissed again, and made a low nimbly threatening sound. He darted toward Blackjack, then drew
back suddenly and spit disdain at the larger cat.
“You better call him off, Tuf,” Tolly Mune said.
“Felines sometimes demonstrate a biological compulsion to battle in order to establish deference
rankings,” Tuf said. “This is particularly true of tomcats. Dax, undoubtedly aided and abetted by his
enhanced psionic capabilities, long ago established his supremacy over Chaos and my other cats.
Undoubtedly he now feels his position threatened. It is not a matter for serious concern, First Councillor
Mune.”
“It is for Dax,” she said, as the black tom crept closer. Blackjack, in her lap, looked up at his rival with
vast boredom.
“I fail to grasp your point,” said Tuf.
“Blackjack has those enhanced psionic capabilities, too,” said Tolly Mune. “Plus a few other, ah,
advantages. Implanted duralloy claws, sharp as goddamned razors, concealed in special paw sheaths. A
subcutaneous net of nonallogenic plasteel mesh that makes him awfully tough to hurt. Reflexes that have
been genetically accelerated to make him twice as quick and dextrous as a normal cat. A very high pain
threshold. I don’t want to be puling crass about it or anything, but if he gets jumped, Blackjack will slice
Dax into little bloody hairballs.”
Haviland Tuf blinked, and shoved the steering stick over toward Tolly Mune. “Perhaps it might be best if
you drove.” He reached out, picked up his angry black tomcat by the ruff of the neck, and deposited
him, screeching and spitting, in his lap, where he held him very still indeed. “Proceed in that direction,” he
said, pointing with a long pale finger.


“It appears,” said Haviland Tuf, steepling his fingers as he regarded her from the depths of a huge
wingback armchair, “that circumstances have altered somewhat since I last came to call upon S’uthlam.”
Tolly Mune studied him carefully. His paunch was larger than it had been, and his long face was just as
miserly of expression, but without Dax in his lap, Haviland Tuf looked almost naked. Tuf had shut the big
black tom up on a lower deck to keep him away from Blackjack. Since the ancient seedship was thirty