"Blish, James - A Hero's Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

'Oh, at least a couple of megariyals - and I mean apiece,' Da-Ud said grandly. 'I can't imagine an opportunity like that comes around very often, even in the circles you're used to.'

'What would we have to do to earn it?' Simon said with carefully calculated doubt.

'Play straight with the Guild. They want the material badly, and if we don't trick them we'll be protected by their own rules. And with that much money, there are a hundred places in the galaxy where you'd be safe from High Earth for the rest of your life.'

'And what about your half-sister?'

'Well, I'd be sorry to lose that chance, but cheating the Guild wouldn't bring her back, would it? And in a way, wouldn't it be aesthetically more satisfying to pay them back for Jillith by being scrupulously fair with them? "Justice is Love", you know, and all that.'

'I don't know,' Simon said fretfully. "The difficulty lies in defining justice, I suppose - you know as well as I do that it can excuse the most complicated treasons. And "What do you mean by love?" isn't easily answerable either. In the end one has to chuck it off as a woman's question, too private to be meaningful in a man's world - let alone in matters of polity. Hmmmm.'

This maundering served no purpose but to suggest that Simon was still trying to make up his mind; actually he had reached a decision several minutes ago. Da-Ud had broken; he would have to be disposed of.

Da-Ud listened with an expression of polite bafflement which did not quite completely conceal a gleam of incipient triumph. Ducking a trumpet-vine which appeared to be trying to crown him with thorns, Simon added at last: 'You may well be right -but we'll have to be mortally careful. There may after all be another agent from High Earth here; in matters of this importance they wouldn't be likely to rest with only one charge in the chamber. That means you'll have to follow my instructions to the letter, or we'll never live to spend a riyal of the proceeds.'

'You can count on me,' Da-Ud said, tossing his hair out of his eyes. 'I've handled everything well enough this time, haven't I? And after all it was my idea.'

'Certainly; an expert production. Very well. What I want you to do now is go back to Valkol and tell him that I've betrayed you, and sold the other half of the secret to the Rood-Prince.'

'Surely you wouldn't actually do such a thing!'

'Oh, but I would, and I shall - the deed will be done by the time you get back to Druidsfall, and for the same twenty riyals that you paid for your half.'

'But the purpose-?'

'Simple. I cannot come to Druidsfall with my remaining half-if there's another Earthman there, I'd be shot before I got halfway up the steps of the Hall. I want the Guild to consolidate the two halves by what seems to be an unrelated act of aggression, between local parties. You make this clear to them by telling them that I won't actually make the sale to the Rood-Prince until I hear from you that you have the rest of the money. To get the point across at once, when you tell His Politeness that I've "betrayed" you - wink.'

'And how do I get word to you this time?'

'You wear this ring. It communicates with a receiver in my Clasp. I'll take matters from there.'

The ring - which was actually only a ring, which would never communicate anything to anybody - changed hands. Then Da-Ud saluted Simon with solemn glee, and went away to whatever niche in history - and in the walls of the Guild hall of Boadicea -is reserved for traitors without style; and Simon, breaking the stalk of a lyre-bush which had sprung up between his feet, went off to hold his muttering, nattering skull and do nothing at all.



Valkol the Polite - or the Exarch's agent, it hardly mattered which - did not waste any time. From a vantage-point high up on the principate's only suitable mountain, Simon watched their style of warfare with appreciation and some wonder.

Actually, in the manoeuvring itself the hand of the Exarchy did not show, and did not need to; for the whole campaign would have seemed like a token display, like a tournament, had it not been for the few score of casualties which seemed inflicted almost inadvertently. Even among these there were not many deaths, as far as Simon could tell - at least, not by the standards of battle to which he was accustomed. Clearly nobody who mattered got killed, on either side.

The Rood-Prince, in an exhibition of bravado more garish than sensible deployed on the plain before his city several thousand pennon-bearing mounted troopers who had nobody to fight but a rabble of foot soldiers which Druidsfall obviously did not intend to be taken seriously; whereupon the city was taken

from the Gulf side, by a squadron of flying submarines which broke from the surface of the sea on four buzzing wings like so many dragonflies.

These devices particularly intrigued Simon. Some Boadicious genius, unknown to the rest of the galaxy, had solved the orni-thopter problem… though the wings were membranous rather than feathered. Hovering, the machines thrummed their wings through a phase shift of a full 180 degrees, but when they swooped the wings moved in a horizontal figure eight, lifting with a for-ward-and-down stroke, and propelling with the backstroke. A long fish-like tail gave stability, and doubtless had other uses under water.

After the mock battle, the 'thopters landed and the troops withdrew; and then matters took a more sinister turn, manifested by thumping explosions and curls of smoke from inside the Rood palace. Evidently a search was being made for the supposedly hidden documents Simon was thought to have sold, and it was not going well. The sounds of demolition, and the occasional public hangings, could only mean that a maximum interrogation of the Rood-Prince had failed to produce any papers, or any clues to them.

This Simon regretted, as he did the elimination of Da-Ud. He was not normally so ruthless - an outside expert would have called his workmanship in this affair perilously close to being sloppy - but the confusion caused by the transduction serum, now rapidly rising as it approached term, had prevented him from manipulating every factor as subtly as he had originally hoped to do. Only the grand design was still intact now: It would now be assumed that Boadicea had clumsily betrayed the Exarchy leaving the Guild no way out' but to capitulate utterly to Simon… with whatever additional humiliations he judged might not jeopardize the mission, for Jillith's sake