"Larry Niven - The Deadlier Weapon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

"Please."
"Fasten your seat belt."
"Why?" But he knew. He knew.
"We're going to have an accident."
"Let me out first. Look, I-- will you please look?" I found I was strangling the wheel again. Because up ahead was where the freeway became a bowl of concrete noodles. I'd driven this route before. Here in downtown Los Angeles was where the Santa Monica Freeway led into the Harbor, Santa Ana, and San Bernardino Freeways. The ramps led up and over and around and under each other, and most of the time there was nothing but empty space to left and right. Speeding cars and empty space, separated by fragile metal rails and common sense.
My passenger knew it too. He was swiveling his head, toward the road, toward me, toward the road, toward me. Then he snapped out of it. He yelled, "Will you look at me?"
I looked, and he twitched, because now I wasn't watching the road. He was holding the knife out the window, holding it with two fingers around the tip of the handle. He let it drop, ostentatiously, and I saw it bounce once in the mirror. "I dropped the knife," he said. "You saw it. Now let me out."
I nodded. I braked and swung to the left. The car lurched and jerked and tried to pull free and slowed and stopped, not too far from where there wouldn't have been gravel to stop on. Cars whizzed past, and the wind of their passing sounded like blows against the side of the Cadillac.
"Not here! I'll be killed!"
I touched the accelerator and the car jumped forward. He was out and around the side and behind the trunk in one smooth, lithe motion, and if there'd been a car coming it would have hit him. I touched the accelerator again to get beyond him, then reached across to slam the door he'd left open.
At the next gap in the traffic I was off, accelerating hard to keep from being hit from behind. The last I saw of the hitchhiker, he was hunched over the guard rail, actually using it for support, not looking at the four lanes of traffic he'd have to pass alive.
I edged to the right across four lanes of hurtling cars, being careful. I saw no point in getting killed now. I took the next turnoff, slowing, feeling my hands begin to shake. My cigarette was still going, and I dragged on it, practically breathing through it. Amazingly, it was mostly unburned. I turned in at the first gas station I saw, stopped alongside the pumps, and rested my head on the wheel. I rubbed my forehead against the smooth surface, harder and harder, because the sensation told me I was still alive.
"What can we do for you? I said-- hey, mister, are you all right?"
"I'm fine. Where's a telephone?"
"Over there." They were in plain sight. I couldn't have missed them if I'd bothered to look first.
"Good. Fill it up. I've got to call the police."
I had trouble getting the coin in the slot.
"About his height," I told the desk sergeant. "Five eleven, say. You wouldn't call him skinny, but he's not fat. Brown hair, a little too long, parted on the left. Long, thin face. By the time you get to him he should have a great big blister on the end of his nose."
"Why?"
"At one point I touched him there with a cigarette lighter."
"You did!" Ha! I'd surprised him. At first he'd sounded like someone who could never be surprised by anything. "Go on, Mr. Ruch."
"He's wearing dark glasses, a dark blue windbreaker, gray slacks. I left him stranded on the wrong side of the eastbound lane, just west of the Olympic turnoff."
"We'll find him, Mr. Ruch. Can you come down to the station and give us a signed statement?" He told me how to get there.
"Okay, fine, but will you give me an hour and a half? I need a drink."
"I can believe that. No hurry, Mr. Ruch. But we do need that statement."
One fast drink stopped my shakes, at least on the outside. I thought I could trust my voice now, so I called Carla in Garden Grove. "I've had some car trouble, honey. Nothing expensive, but I won't be home for dinner. Tell Stan and Eva I'm sorry, and I'll be in around eight if I'm lucky."
"Oh, that's a shame. What kind of trouble?"
"Tell you later."
"You have to get up early tomorrow, remember? Rehearsal."
"No problem. I'll be home in plenty of time."
By the time I got home I'd know how to tell Carla the truth in a way that wouldn't scare the pants off her.
Two drinks and I began to giggle, thinking about the blister on the end of the hitchhiker's nose, thinking about the hopeful look on his face when he dropped the knife out the window, how he had to make so damn sure I was watching him. Giggles was too much of a good thing, so I had a sandwich and a glass of milk to drown the second drink.
I could legitimately tell Carla that the hitchhiker had never had a chance. It would reassure her, and it was true. I'd been better armed from the beginrung. He'd had nothing but a knife. I had had a car. Much deadlier.
I reached the station half an hour late. They'd changed desk men. I was explaining why I was there when they brought in the hitchhiker.
He wasn't struggling. He seemed completely exhausted. He actually had trouble walking. But his head came up when he saw me. The tip of his nose was a small white bubble surrounded by angry red flesh.
"So you didn't have the guts!" he snarled. "You chickened out! You yellow-bellied--" He paused to think up an adequately insulting noun, ignoring the police officer who jerked warningly at his arm.
"I couldn't go through with it," I admitted, and looked sheepishly down at the toes of my shoes. Why tell him? He had enough troubles.
****
The preceding story was not autobiographical. I daydreamed it while driving the Santa Monica Freeway.
The guy who asked me that question tells me that he was once threatened by a hitchhiker with a knife... and that a friend of his tells the same story. Neither of the two tried that fancy suicide approach. They explained to their assailants that if they didn't see total surrender damn quick, they were going to obliterate the right side of the car against a tree at sixty mph. The left side of the car would have to take its chances.
It worked for them. I hope I won't ever have to try that
approach myself.
****
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