"Anderson, Poul - Fire Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)
"That Olaya show, it was honest. It touched reality. I felt that, and ... I can tell you my people on Ishtar would. If nothing else, they'd understand we still have free speech here, Earth isn't a monolithic monster. It ought to help."
Now Dejerine was quiet for a time which grew, At the end, he jumped to his feet. "All right!" he exclaimed. "I asked for your advice, and-Donald, Don, may I call you? I'm Yuri-immediately you begin. Come, do have some more. Let us settle down to the serious business of getting drunk."
THREE
SOUTHBOUND, LARREKA AND his attendants neared Primavera about noon of the day after he had left his wife at Yakulen Ranch. The human settlement lay three marches upriver from the city of Sehala. No longer was that site a precaution against possible trouble. Surely everyone in Beronnen, and most dwellers elsewhere throughout the Gathering, had come to understand that the Earthfolk were their friends, the last best hope of saving their entire civilization. But the aliens still needed space to raise crops and cattle which could nourish them in ways that raingrain or breadroot, the flesh of els or owas, could not. And those who studied nature, like Jill Conway, preferred readier access to wildlife than the plowlands around Sehala afforded. And those who studied people declared that their own constant presence in the city would be too upsetting.
Not that any such effect could amount to a dust-puffLarreka had often thought-alongside the upsettingness built into this world.
He swung briskly down a road which paralleled the wide, sheening flow of the Jayin- An important highway, it was brick-paved; he feit heat as well as gritty hardness. But that was enough for a tough-padded old soldier to show himself by putting on buskins. Bad though the time was becoming. South Beronnen always escaped the worst of what the Rover passed out . . . except indirectly, of course, when starveling hordes invaded this favored land. Furthermore, right now was midautumn in the southern hemisphere, the airs easing off toward rainy winter, no matter how hard the Rover tried to screw things up.
Its red glower, low above northern hills which it turned amethyst, was near setting. The Sun stood high and brilliant. Double shadows and blended hues made the landscape strange. It rolled gently away from either bank of the river. This shore was given over to human cultivation. Wheat, corn, and the rest had been harvested, leaving stubblefields; but apples flushed in an orchard, homed fourlegged animals chewed grass behind fenceshow green everything was! The opposite side remained native: turf of golden-hued lia studded with scarlet firebloom, trees in coppices tawny (swordleaf) or ocherous (swirlwood and leatherbark) Wingseed birches were propagating yonder, and many pods flapped across the stream before they ran out of stored energy and fell to the ground. Nature's carelessness: they could no longer take root over here; the soil had been changed too much.
The breeze into which they beat was pleasant after the morning's sultriness. Larreka heard his mane rustle. He drank the sweet weird odors of Earthside growth with an appreciation learned through a hundred years. The grimness of his present mission didn't lessen that. A soldier shouldn't let worry spoil whatever bonuses life tossed his way.
"How much further, sir?" asked one of the half-dozen males at his back. They weren't needed in these closely settled, food-rich parts. But it had expedited the trek across North Beronnen and over the Thunderhead Mountains, to have some who could be detached to hunt and forage while the rest kept going, and extra hands for camp chores. Larreka figured he might as well let them come the whole way to Sehala and its fleshpots. Poor bastards, they wouldn't get a lot of fun during their youth. He who had spoken was a native of Foss Island in the Fiery Sea, recruited there and posted directly to Valennen because that was where the Zera was stationed these years. He had never before visited the mother continent.
"Chu, maybe an hour." Larreka used a unit denoting the sixteenth part of a noon-to-noon, coincidentally quite near to the Earth measurement. "Keep moving. I told you we'll overnight there."
"Well, at least Skeela'll soon be down."
"Huh?-Oh. Oh, yes." With as many names as he had heard for the red orb, Larreka could generally spot another.
He himself thought of it as the Rover, since he belonged to the Triadic cult. There it was central, together with the Sun and that Darkness on whose brow smolders the Ember Star. As a youth in Haelen, he had called it Abbada, and had been told it was an outlaw god who returned every thousand years; later he became skeptical, and considered the pagan rites of propitiation a waste of good meat. The barbarians of Valennen were in such awe of the thing that they gave it no name whatsoever, Just a lot of epithets, none of which should be used twice in a row lest its attention be drawn to the speaker. And so the business went, different everywhere, including among the humans. They called the red one Anu, and denied a soul of any kind was in it; and likewise for the Sun, which they called Bel, and the Ember Star, which they called Ea.
In many ways, their concept was the creepiest of the lot. Larreka had had to nerve himself to master their teachings. He couldn't yet believe that there was nothing to the Triad but fire. And whether or not that was the case, he'd carry out the rites and commandments of his religion. It was a good faith for a soldier, popular in the legions, excellent for morale and discipline.
From the outside, Larreka didn't look like a person who would study philosophy. He might have been a veteran sergeant, slightly undersized but heavily muscled, less graceful than most though exceedingly fast when needful. Wounds deep enough to leave permanent scars had seamed his body in places; a gouge crossed the bone of his brow, and his left ear was missing. Haeleners being of South Beronnen origin, he had skin formerly pale brown, turned dark and leathery by many weathers, wherein his eyes stood ice-blue. His speech kept traces of a rough homeland accent, and his most conspicuous weapon-practically his trademark-was the heavy knuckleduster-handled curve-bladed shortsword favored in that antarctic country. Otherwise he wore only a purse-belt for small articles, and the arms and travel kit strapped in a bundle on his back or loaded in two wicker panniers. This included a hunting spear and a hatchet which could double as a weapon. Nothing was ornamented; it was well-worn cloth, hide, wood, steel. His sole jewelry was a gold chain around the thick left wrist.
The soldiers behind him were gaudier, sporting plumes, beadwork, jingling links. They were also very respectful of their shabby leader- Larreka Zabat's son of Clan Kerazzi was perhaps the most demanding of the thirtythree legionary commandants. After two centuries in the Zera, he was far into middle age, three hundred and ninety on his last birthday. But he could expect another hundred years of health, and might well hope for more-if a barbarian didn't get him first, or any of the natural catastrophes the Rover was brewing for the world.
It slipped under the horizon. For a brief while, clouds to the north were sullen from its rays. Then the sane light of the Sun shone free. Cumulus loomed tall and white above a blue shadowiness hinting at storm.
"Think it'll rain, sir?" asked the male from Foss Island. "I sure wouldn't mind." Though near the equator, his home was refreshed by winds off the sea. Here he felt hot and dusty.
"Save your thirst for Primavera," Larreka advised. "The beer there is good." He squinted. "N-n-no, I wouldn't look for rain today. Tomorrow, maybe. Don't be in a fume about it, son. You'll soon get more water hereabouts than you can handle, enough to drown a galleyfish. Maybe then you'll appreciate Valennen better/'
"I doubt that," a companion said. "Valennen's supposed to go even drier than it futtering well already is."
"Puttering ain't the word, Saleh," a third put in with a crow of laughter. "Female pelts "11 get baked 'so stiff you could sand a hole in your belly."
His exaggeration was moderate. Loss of moisture did coarsen the mat of fine green plant growth covering most of a body. "Why, as for that," Larreka said, "heed the voice of experience," and described alternate techniques in blunt language.
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