"Philip Jose Farmer - Jesus on Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

humans closely. Their skins were a light bronze; their eyes, almost purplish; their
hair was feathery. One was yellow; one, Titian; one, black. Both the female and
the two males had hairless faces. Whether it was because they just lacked hair
or because they shaved, the Earthmen did not yet know. Like their human
companions, they sported long curling earlocks.
Their ears were much larger than any human's, and the convolutions were
baroque, from a Terran's viewpoint. Their chins were huge, reminding Orme of
photographs of people suffering from acromegaly. Their noses were very large
and extremely aquiline, and the nostrils were edged in blue-black. Their lips
would have been human if they had not been lined with a black-green
pigmentation. Otherwise, they closely resembled Homo sapiens, even in the
shape of their teeth.
All the newcomers wore robes, single-piece garments of a light thin
material. Some were sleeveless, some had low collars, other were V-necked.
The colours ranged from solid black, orange, and green to stripes of many
colours. Most were ankle-length, but a few came to just below the knee. One
male wore a cloak with clusters of four tassels at each corner. Their footwear
was sandals or buskins, all open-toed. The female's robe was heavily brocaded
with abstract designs, but she was not alone in sporting many jewelled rings,
gold or silver bracelets, and earrings. The latter were secured by little screws.
All wore headpieces of different sizes and designs, one looking like a
cowboy's ten-gallon hat and two like 18th-century tricorns, one of which flaunted
a huge feather.
The female exuded a musky perfume, and her upper eyelids were coated
with blue and her right nostril with a semicircle of yellow.
Hfathon, the chief of the non-humans, who were called Krsh, walked in
first. Close behind him, as befitted the second in importance, came Ya'aqob Bar-
Abbas, a human. He had a large aquiline nose, a bull neck, and extremely broad
shoulders. He looked as if he was forty-five Terran years old. But if what he'd told
Bronski was true, he was one hundred and thirty.
The other nonhumans were Hmmindron, a male, and Zhkeesh, a female.
Yirmeyah Ben-Yokhanan and Sha'ul Ben-Hebhel were human.
Hfathon greeted the prisoners with a raised right arm, two fingers forming
a V and a thumb extending at right angles to them. He smiled, exposing teeth
blue from some sort of chewing gum. He spoke to Ya'aqob, who then said
something in Greek to Bronski. Orme didn't understand more than a word of it.
Bronski, the linguist, had discovered that neither Aramaic nor Koine Greek was
the common speech, but scholars had preserved them and were quite fluent in
both. Bronski could read Koine, or New Testament Greek, with ease, but he'd
had little practice speaking it. However, if his interrogators spoke slowly, he could
understand most of what they said.
There was a number of Krsh loan words used because the original Greek
had no words for advanced scientific or philosophical concepts. These had had
to be explained in Greek to him.
Orme was glad that at least there was one language available to both
groups. Otherwise, it would take many weeks before they could communicate to
any extent with their captors. Meanwhile, Danton and Shirazi were stuck up in
the ship. If they didn't hear from their colleagues in three weeks, they'd be forced
to return to Earth.
Or so he thought. For all he knew, the Martians had already sent up one of