"CL Moore - Shambleau" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

"Yes," he said. "And I'm keeping her! Stand back there!"

The man stared at him wordlessly, and horror and disgust and incredulity mingled on his weather-beaten face, The incredulity triumphed for a moment and he said again,
"Yours!"
Smith nodded defiance.
The man stepped back suddenly, unutterable contempt in his very pose. He waved an arm to the crowd and said loudly, ' 'It's-his!" and the press melted away, gone silent, too, and the look of contempt spread from face to face.





The ex-Patrolman spat on the slag-paved street and turn-ed his back indifferently. "Keep her, then," he advised brief-ly over one shoulder. "But don't let her out again in this town!"
Smith stared in perplexity almost open-mouthed as the suddenly scornful mob began to break up. His mind was in a whirl. That such bloodthirsty animosity should vanish in a breath he could not believe. And the curious mingling of con-tempt and disgust on the faces he saw baffled him even more. Lakkdarol was anything but a puritan town-it did not enter his head f or a moment that his claiming the brown girl as his own had caused that strangely shocked revulsion to spread through the crowd. No, it was something deeper rooted than that. Instinctive, instant disgust had been in the faces he saw- they would have looked less so if he had ad-mitted cannibalism or Pharol-worship.
And they were leaving his vicinity as swiftly as if what-ever unknowing sin he had committed were contagious. The street was emptying as rapidly as it had filled. He saw a sleek Venusian glance back over his shoulder as he turned the corner and sneer, "Shambleau!" and the word awoke a new line of speculation in Smith's mind. Shambleau! Vague-ly of French origin, it must be. And strange enough to hear it from the lips of Venusians and Martian drylanders, but it was their use of it that puzzled him more. "We never let those things live," the ex-Patrolman had said. It reminded him dimly of something. . . an ancient line from some writ-ing in his own tongue . . . "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." He smiled to himself at the similarity, and simulta-neously was aware of the girl at, his elbow.

She has risen soundlessly. He turned to face her, sheath-ing his gun and stared at first with curiosity and then in the entirely frank openness with which men regard that which is not wholly human. For she was not. He knew it at a glance, though the brown, sweet body was shaped like a woman's and she wore the garment of scarlet-he saw it was leather-with an ease that few unhuman beings achieve toward clothing. He knew it from the moment he looked into her eyes, and a shiver of unrest went over him as he met them. They were frankly green as young grass, with ,slit-like, feline pupils that pulsed unceasingly, and there was a look of dark, animal wisdom in their depths-that look of the beast which sees more than man.

There was no hair upon her face-neither brows nor lashes, and he would have sworn, that the tight scarlet tur-ban bound around her head covered baldness. She had three fingers and a thumb and her feet had four digits apiece too, and all sixteen of them were tipped with round claws that sheathed back into the flesh like a cat's. She ran her tongue over her lips-a thin, pink, flat tongue as feline as her eyes -and spoke with difficulty. He felt that that throat and tongue had never been shaped for human speech.

"Not-afraid now," she said softly, and her little teeth were white and pointed as a kitten's.

"What did they want you for?" he asked her curiously. "What had you done? Shambleau is that your name?"
"I-not talk, your-speech," she demurred hesitantly.
"Well, try to-- I want to know. Why were they chasing you? Will you be safe on the street now, or hadn't you better get indoors somewhere? They looked dangerous."

"I-go with you." She brought it out with difficulty.



Say you!" Smith grinned. "What are you, anyhow? You look like a kitten to me."


"Shambleau." She said it somberly.
"Where d'you live? Are you a Martian?"
"I come from-from far-from long ago-far country-" "Wait!" laughed Smith. "You're getting your wires cross-ed. You're not a Martian?"
She drew herself up very straight beside him, lifting the turbaned head, and there was something queenly in the poise of her.

"Martian?" she said scornfully. "My people-are-are -you have no word. Your speech-hard for me."

"What's yours? I might know it-try me."
She lifted her head and met his eyes squarely, and there was in hers a subtle amusement-he could have sworn it.
"Som e day I-speak to you in-my own language," she promised, and the pink tongue flicked out over her lips,
swiftly, hungrily.
Approaching footsteps on the red pavement interrupted Smith's reply. A dryland Martian came past, reeling a little and exuding an aroma of segir-whisky, the Venusian brand. When he caught the red flash of the girl's tatters he turned his head sharply, and as his segir-steeped brain took in the fact of. her presence he lurched toward the recess unsteadily, bawling, "Shambleau, by Pharoll Shambleau!" and reached out a clutching hand.

Smith struck it aside contemptuously.
"On your way, drylander," he advised.
The man drew back and stared, blear-eyed.
Oh! Yours, eh?" he croaked. ."Zut! -You're welcome to it!"
And like the ex-Patrolman before him he spat on the pavement and turned away, muttering harshly in the blasphem-ous tongue of the drylands.