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

Now, suddenly, he had hope.

Hope came to him a month after he'd been made foreman of the kitchen slaves of the Duke of Tropat. It came
to him as he was standing behind the Duchess during a meal and directing those who were waiting upon her.

It was the Duchess Zuni who had not so subtly maneuvered him from the labor pens to his coveted, if
dangerous, position. Why dangerous? Because she was very jealous and possessive, and the slightest hint of
lack of attention from him could mean he'd lose his life or one limb or another. The knowledge of what had
happened to his two predecessors kept him extremely sensitive to her every gesture, her every wish.

That fateful morning he was standing behind her as she sat at one end of the long breakfast table. In one hand
he held his foreman's wand, a little white baton topped by a large red ball. With it he gestured at the slaves
who served food, who poured wine and beer, who fanned away the flies, who carried in the household god
and sat it on the god chair, who played something like music. Now and then he bent over the Duchess Zuni's
long black hair and whispered phrases from this or that love poem, praising her beauty, her supposed
unattainability, and his burning, if seemingly hopeless, passion for her. Zuni would smile, or repeat the
formula of thanksтИТтИТ the short oneтИТтИТ or else giggle at his funny accent.

The Duke sat at the other end of the table. He ignored the byтИТplay, just as he ignored the soтИТcalled secret
passage inside the walls of the castle, which Green used to get to the Duchess's apartments. Custom
demanded this, just as custom demanded that he should play the outraged husband if she got tired of Green or
angry at him and accused him publicly of amorous advances. This was enough to make Green jittery, but he
had more than the Duke to consider. There was Alzo.

Alzo was the Duchess's watchdog, a mastiffтИТlike monster with shaggy redтИТgold hair. The dog hated Green
with a vindictiveness that Green could only account for by supposing that the animal knew, perhaps from his
bodyтИТodor, that he was not a native of this planet, Alzo rumbled a warning deep in his chest every time
Green bent over the Duchess or made a tooтИТsudden movement. Occasionally he rose to his four feet and
nuzzled the man's leg. When that happened Green could not keep from breaking out into a sweat, for the dog
had twice bitten him, playfully, so to speak, and severely lacerated his calf. As if that weren't bad enough,
Green had to worry that the natives might notice that his scars healed abnormally fast, almost overnight. He'd
been forced to wear bandages on his legs long after the new skin had come in.

Even now, the nauseating canine was sniffing around Green's quivering hide in the hope of putting the fear of
the devil in him. At that moment the Earthman resolved that, come the headsman's ax, rack, wheel, or other
hellish tortures, he was going to kill that hound. It was just after he made that vow that the Duchess caused
him to forget altogether the beast.

"Dear," said Zuni, interrupting the Duke in the midst of his conversation with a merchantтИТcaptain, "what is
this I hear about two men who have fallen from the sky in a great ship of iron?"

Green quivered, and he held his breath as be waited for the Duke's reply.

The Duke, a short, dark manyтИТchinned man with white hair and very thick bristly saltтИТandтИТpepper eyebrows,
frowned.

The Green Odyssey 2
 The Green Odyssey