"Chalker, Jack L - Soul 1 - Spirits Of Flux And Anchor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

in a hundred. In fact, only four stringers had been
invited to the Celebration this year and, it was said,
only two had accepted, the rest preferring fatter
pickings in other Anchors with more potential
victims -- and profits. That fact alone made the ap-
pearance of this one even more of a standout than
it normally would have been.

He was a tall, lean, muscular man with coal-
black hair and a handlebar moustache, and in
normal circumstances and with a normal back-
ground he would have been considered a hand-

8 Jack L. Chalker

some man, even a desirable man, by those Cassie's
age and older. But he was not a normal man with
a normal background, and it was clear to any who
looked upon him that this was so. There was just
something about him, something you couldn't put
your finger on, that radiated a fearsome chill to all
he passed. His face was worn and aged well beyond
his years, his skin seemed tough as leather, and his
eyes, a weirdly washed-out blue, radiated contempt
for World and its offerings- He was dressed in
black denim, including black boots, gloves, and a
wide-brimmed black hat that had one side of its
wide brim tied up in stringer fashion, and a black
leather jacket lined with weathered sheepskin that
must have once been white.

Weathered.... That was a good word for him.
His boots, his clothes, even his sawed-off shotgun
with the fancy carved handle that hung from his
silver-decorated belt in a special holster -- they all
were weathered almost beyond belief.

He rode slowly, imperiously, right past Cassie,
but those cold, distant eyes took no notice whatso-
ever of the thin, slightly built girl nor of much of
anyone or anything else, either. She shivered a bit,
then turned and began walking back towards the
communal farm where she had been bom and
raised.

The farm lay at the end of a winding, rutted dirt
road, about a kilometer back from the main high-
way, and on either side of the girl stretched broad
fields of grass dotted with grazing cows. She knew
every rut in that road by heart, and every cow as