"Philip Jose Farmer - The Green Odyssey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

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 The Green Odyssey


emptiness left after a ball from a Ving musket had struck it.

"It's four weeks until the very last day on which I can set sail from here and still get to Estorya and back
before the rains come. It's just barely possible to have the tanks built, get them convoyed down to the
seashore, get the fish in and bring them back. Meantime, I can be having the deck altered. If my men work
day and night we can make it."

"Of course, this is a oneтИТshot proposition. You can't possibly keep a monopoly on the idea, once the first trip
is over. Too many people are bound to talk, and the other captains will hear of it."

"I know; don't teach an Effenycan to suck eggs. But what if the fish should die?"

Green shrugged and spread out his palms, "A possibility. You're taking a tremendous gamble. But every
voyage on the Xurdimur is, isn't it? How many windrollers come back? Or how many can boast your list of
forty successful trips?"

"Not many," said Miran.

He slumped in his seat, brooding over his goblet of wine. His eye, sunk in ranges of fat, seemed to stare
through Green. The Earthman pretended indifference, though his heart was pounding, and he controlled his
breathing with difficulty.

"You're asking a great deal," Miran finally said. "If the Duke were to find out that I'd agreed to help a valued
slave escape, I'd be tortured in a most refined way, and the Clan Effenycan would be stripped of all its rights
to sail windrollers and would probably be exiled to its native hills. Or else would have to take to piracy. And
that, despite all the glamorous stories you hear, is not a very wellтИТpaying profession."

"You'd make a killing in Estorya."

"True, but when I think of what the Duchess will do when she discovers you've fled the country! Ow, ow,
ow!"

"There's no reason why you should be connected with my disappearance. A dozen craft leave the harbor
every day. Besides, for all she'll know, I've gone the opposite way, over the hills and to the ocean. Or to the
hills themselves, where many runaway slaves are."

"Yes, but I have to return to Tropat. And my clansmen, though notoriously tightтИТlipped when sober, are also,
I must confess, notorious drunkards. Someone'd be sure to babble in the taverns."

"I'll dye my hair black, cut it short, like a Tzatlam tribesman, and sign on."

"You forget that you have to belong to my clan in order to be a crew member."

"Hmmm. Well, what about this adoptionтИТbyтИТblood routine?"