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

'Of course not,' Simon said with a smile. 'I sold them for twenty riyals; do you think the Rood-Prince would recall any such piddling exchange? I appeared as a bookseller, and sold them to his librarian. I suppose you burned the library - barbarians always do.'

Valkol looked at the vombis. 'The price agrees with the, uh, testimony of Da-Ud tarn Altair. Do you think -?'

'It is possible. But we should take no chances; e.g., such a search would be time-consuming.'

The glitter in Valkol's eyes grew brighter and colder. 'True. Perhaps the quickest course would be to give him over to the Sodality.'

Simon snorted. The Sodality was a lay organization to which Guilds classically entrusted certain functions the Guild lacked time and manpower to undertake, chiefly crude physical torture.

'If I'm really who you think I am,' he said, 'such a course would win you nothing but an unattractive cadaver - not even suitable for masonry repair.'

'True,' Valkol said reluctantly. 'I don't suppose you could be induced - politely - to deal fairly with us, at this late date? After all, we did pay for the documents in question, and not any mere twenty riyals.'

'I haven't the money yet.'

'Naturally not, since the unfortunate Da-Ud was held here with it until we decided he no longer had any use for it. However, if upon the proper oaths -'

'High Earth is the oldest oath-breaker of them all,' the Fomentor said. 'We - viz., the Exarchy - have no more time for such trials. The question must be put.'

'So it would seem. Though 1 hate to handle a colleague thus.'

'You fear High Earth,' the vombis said. 'My dear Valkol, may I remind you -'

'Yes, yes, I know all that,' Valkol snapped to Simon's surprise. 'Nevertheless - Mr de Kuyl, are you sure we have no recourse but to send you to the Babble Room?'

'Why not?' Simon said. 'I rather enjoy hearing myself think. In fact, that's what I was doing when you two interrupted me.'



Simon was naturally far from feeling all the bravado he had voiced, but he had no choice left but to trust to the transduction serum, which was now on the shuddering, giddy verge of depriving all three of them of what they each most wanted. Only Simon could know this, but only he also knew something much worse - that in so far as his distorted time-sense could calculate, the antidote was due to be released into his bloodstream at best in another six hours, at worst within only a few minutes. After that, the Exarchy's creature would be the only victor - and the only survivor.

And when he saw the Guild's toposcope laboratory, he wondered if even the serum would be enough to protect him. There was nothing in the least outmoded about it; Simon had never encountered its like even on High Earth. Exarchy equipment, all too probably.

Nor did the apparatus disappoint him. It drove directly down into his subconscious with the resistless unconcern of a spike penetrating a toy balloon. Immediately, a set of loudspeakers above his supine body burst into multi-voiced life:

'Is this some trick? No one but Berentz had a translation-permit -'

'Now the overdrive my-other must woo and win me -'

'Wie schaifen Sie es, solche Entfernungen bei Unterlichtges-chwindigkeit zurueckzulegen?'

'REMEMBER THOR FIVE!'

'Pok. Pok. Pok.'

'We're so tired of wading in blood, so tired of drinking blood, so tired of dreaming about blood -'

The last voice rose to a scream and all the loudspeakers cut off abruptly. Valkol's face, baffled but not yet worried, hovered over Simon's, peering into his eyes.