"Mack Reynolds - North Africa 01 - Blackman's Burden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

"Brother, you said it," she told him. "Where can I change out of these
rags?"
 "On you they look good," Clifford Jackson told her. He looked
surprisingly like the Joe Louis of several decades earlier.

"That's enough out of you, wise guy," Isobel told him. "Why doesn't
somebody dream up a role for me where I can be a rich paramount chief's
favorite wife, or something? Be loaded down with gold and jewelry, that
sort of thing."

Jake brought her the drink. "Your clothes are in there," he told her,
motioning with his head to an inner room. "It wouldn't do the job," he
added. "What we're giving them is the old Cinderella story." He looked at
his watch. "If we get under way, we can take the jet to Kabara and go into
your act there. It's been nearly six months since Kabara and they'll be all
set for the second act."

She knocked back the brandy and made her way to the other room,
saying over her shoulder, "Be with you in a minute."

"Not that much of a hurry," Cliff called. "Take your time, gal, there's a
bath in there. You'll probably want one after a week of living the way
you've been."

"Brother!" she agreed.

Jake was making himself a drink. He said easily to Cliff Jackson, "That's
a fine girl. I'd hate her job. We get the easy deal on this assignment."

Cliff said, "You said it, nigger. How about mixing me a drink, too?"

"Nigger!" Jake said in mock indignation. "Look who's talking." His
voice took on a burlesque of a Southern drawl. "Man when the Good Lawd
was handin‘ out cullahs, you musta thought he said umbrellahs, and said
give me a nice black one."

Cliff laughed with him and said, "Where do we plant poor Isobel next?"

Jake thought about it. "I don't know. The kid's been putting in a lot of
time. I think after about a week in Kabara we ought to go on down to
Dakar and suggest she be given another assignment for a while. Some of
the girls working out of our AFAA office don't do anything except drive
around in recent model cars, showing off the advantages of emancipation,
tossing money around like tourists, and living it up in general."
 On the flight upriver to Kabara, Isobel Cunningham went through the
notes she'd taken on that town. It was also on the Niger, and the
assignment had been almost identical to the Gao one. In fact, she'd gone
through the same routine in Segou, Ke-Macina, Mopti, Goundam and
Bourem, above Gao, and Ansongo, Tillaberi and Niamey below. She was
stretching her luck, if you asked her. Sooner or later she was going to run