"Blish, James - Anywhen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

sort-if he was not an outworlder-but after a few days in the winds they
were all half yellow, for the gold scales smeared off the flying leaves
like butter. Everyone was painted with meaningless riches-the very
bedsheets glittered ineradicably with 19
 A Style in Treason

flakes of it; and brunettes-especially among the elaborate hair styles of
the men-were at a premium.
Druidsfall proper was the usual low jumble of decayed masonry, slightly
less ancient slums, and blank-faced offices, but the fact that it was also
the home city of the Guildhence wholly convenient, if not congenial, for
Simon-gave it character. The traitors had an architectural style of their
own, characterized by structures put together mostly of fragmented statues
and petrified bodies fitted to each other like puzzle pieces or maps.
Traitors on Boadacea had belonged to an honoured social class for seven
hundred years, and their edifices made it known.
- So did their style of dealing. Simon attended upon the planet's
Traitor-in-Chief with all due promptness, wearing the clasp which showed him
to be a brother, though an outworlder, and made himself and his errand known
with almost complete truthfulness-certainly much more than custom would have
demanded. His opposite number, Valkol "the Polite", a portly, jowly man in
a black abah decorated only with the clasp, with a kindly and humorous
expression into which were set eyes like two bites of an iceberg, turned him
out of the Guildhall with only as much courtesy as ,fraternal protocol
strictly required-that is, twelve days to get off the planet.
Thus far, at least, the vombis had proven to be right about the Boadaceans,
to the letter. The spirit remained to be tested.

Simon found an inn in which to lick his wounds and prepare for departure,
as was permitted. Of course he had no intention of leaving; he was simply
preparing to go to ground. Nevertheless, hehad wounds to lick: After only
four clockless, days on Boadacea, he had already been driven into changing
his residence, his methods, and his identity. It was a humiliating
beginning.

20
 A Style in Treason

CHAPTER THREE
Methods next. Listening automatically for the first sound of
possible'interruption, Simon emptied his little poisons into the catch basin
in his new room, and ironically watched the wisps of wine-coloured smoke
rise from the corroded maw of the drain. He was sorry to see them go; they
were old, though venomous, friends; but a ' man's methods can be as telltale
as a thumbprint, and now it would have to be assumed that Valkol had sent
for, and would soon receive, some sort of dossier on Simon. The dossier
would be wrong, but there was no predicting wherein it would be wrong;
hence, out with the poisons, and all their cousins among Simon's apparatus.
When assuming a new identity, the very first rule is: Strip I
The almost worn-away maker's legend on the catch basin read: Julius,