"Gordon R. Dickson - The Cloak and the Staff" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

THE CLOAK AND THE STAFF
By
Gordon R. Dickson
Descending in the icy grey November dawn from the crowded bus that had brought the airline
passengers over the mountains from BolognaтАФas frequently happened in wintertime, the airport at Milan,
Italy, was fogged in; and the courier ship, like the commercial jets, had been forced to set down in
BolognaтАФShane Evert caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of a small stick figure,
inconspicuously etched on the base of a lamppost.

He did not dare to look at it directly, but the side glance was enough. He snagged a taxi and gave the
driver the address of the Aalaag Guard Headquarters for the city.

тАЬEfreddo, Milano,тАЭ said the driver, wheeling the cab through the nearly deserted morning streets.

Shane gave him a monosyllable in a Swiss accent, by way of agreement. Milan was indeed cold in
November. Cold and hard. To the south, Florence would be still soft and warm, with blue skies and
sunlight. The driver was probably hoping to start a conversation and find out what brought his human
passenger to an alien HQ, and that was dangerous. Ordinary humans did not love those who worked for
the Aalaag. If I say nothing, Shane thought, he may be suspicious. No, on second thought, heтАЩll just think
from the Swiss accent that IтАЩm someone who has a relative in trouble in this city and doesnтАЩt feel like
conversation.

The driver spoke of the summer now past. He regretted the old days when tourists had come through.

To both these statements, Shane gave the briefest of responses. Then there was silence in the cab, except
for the noise of travel. Shane leaned his staff at a more comfortable angle against his right leg and left
shoulder, to better accommodate it to the small passenger compartment of the cab. He smoothed his
brown robe over his knees. The image of the stick figure he had seen still floated in his mind. It was
identical with the figure he himself had first marked upon a wall beneath the triple hooks with the dead
man on them, in Aalborg, Denmark, over half a year ago:
O_ I
/__\ I
But he had not marked this one on the lamppost. Nor, indeed, had he marked any of the other such
figures he had glimpsed about the world during the last eight months. One moment of emotional rebellion
had driven him to create an image that was now apparently spawning and multiplying to fill his waking as
well as his sleeping hours with recurring nightmares. It did no good to remind himself that no one could
possibly connect him with the original graffito. It did no good to know that, all these eight months since he
had been an impeccable servant of Lyt Ahn.

Neither fact would be of the slightest help if for some reason Lyt Ahn, or any other Aalaag, should
believe there was cause to connect him with any one of the scratched figures.

What insane egocentric impulse had pushed him to use his own usual pilgrim sect disguise as the symbol
of opposition to the aliens? Any other shape would have done as well. But he had had the alcohol of the
Danish bootleg aquavit inside him; and with the memory of the massive Aalaag father and son in the
square, watching the death of the man they had condemned and executedтАФabove all, with the memory
of their conversation, which he alone of all the humans there could understandтАФalso burning in him, for
one brief moment reason had flown out the window of his mind.

So, now his symbol had been taken up and become the symbol of what was obviously an already