"Philip Jose Farmer - The Empire of the Nine omnibus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

I would have preferred to talk directly, but I could not do that and be free to look
and listen for Murtagh and his men. The first thing I did was to tell the Dakar
people that the code name for me was changed and that I would use the next
name on the list the next time I contacted them. I also explained, briefly, that I
had teen forced to contact them through an enemy. I asked for Doc Caliban,
using his code name of Brass Bwana, of course. A minute passed, and then
Dakar relayed the message that Caliban could not answer himself. But my
message would be passed on to him. However, he had left a message for me.

The goblin has gone mad, and he is our enemy and the enemy of our enemies
his former friends. The goblin is holed up, but we are digging him out.'

I thanked Dakar and signed off.

'Do you know German?' I asked the operator.

He said he didn't, but he might have been lying. Not that it mattered. He was not
likely to know that the goblin had to be Iwaldi, the old dwarf of the Nine. When I
say old, I mean very ancient. He was at least ten thousand years old and
possibly thirty thousand. If I understood Caliban's phrasing correctly, Iwaldi had
gone insane and turned against the others of the Nine, too. Doc Caliban knew
where he was and was going after him. Iwaldi was in the castle of Gramzdorf in
the Black Forest. Though Caliban and I had been able to find out very little about
any of the Nine's secret hideouts, we had discovered that Iwaldi lived at least part
of the year in the castle near the village of Gramzdorf. Caliban had gone there
with two of his men, recent recruits who were sons of the men who had been his
aids in the old days. The fathers were dead now, but the sons had taken their
places beside Doc.

I opened the case of the equipment and smashed the tubes with a hammer and
ripped the wires out. Then I cut a slit through the back of the tent and ordered
Smith, the operator, to step out ahead of me. We went swiftly to another tent
which contained a number of firearms and belts on which to carry grenades. I put
about seven grenades in hooks on a belt which I had secured across my chest. I
tied Smith's hands behind him and secured him to a bush. It took me a minute to
toss a grenade into each of the interiors of the two copters from a distance of two
hundred feet. They exploded and burned furiously; they were indeed beautiful,
though a little awing. I have never gotten over some feeling of awe for the larger
machines that mankind makes. I suppose it's the residue of the first impact of
civilisation on me. When I blew those two fine but deadly machines, I was
asserting the defiance of the savage against the complex and bewildering works
of the technological man.

'Where is the base camp?' I asked Smith. 'Don't stall. I haven't the time to play
around.'

'It's about thirty miles north-east of here,' he said.

There wasn't time to find out if he was lying or not. I went into the bush by the
edge of the camp.