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

Green, after looking to make certain that nobody from the castle was around to see him, ran until he was even
with the rickshaw. Miran halted it and asked what he wanted.

"Your pardon, Your Richness, but may a humble slave speak and not be reprimanded?"

"I presume it is no idle thought you have in mind," said Miran, looking Green over his one eye narrow in its
fatтИТfolds.

"It has to do with money."


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 The Green Odyssey


"Ah, despite your foreign accent you speak with a pleasing voice; you are the golden trumpet of Mennirox,
my patron god. Speak!"

"First Your Richness must swear by Mennirox that you will under no circumstances divulge my proposal."

"There is wealth in this? For me?"

"There is."

Miran glanced at his clansmen, standing there patiently, apparently oblivious of what was going on. He had
power of life and death over them, but he didn't trust them. He said, "Perhaps it would be better if I thought
about this before making such a drastic oath. Could you meet me tonight at the Hour of the Wineglass at the
House of Equality? And could you perhaps give me a slight hint of what you have in mind?"

"The answer to both is yes. My proposal has to do with the dried fish that you carry as cargo to the Estoryans.
There is another thing, too, but I may not even hint at it until I have your oath."

"Very well then. At the agreed hour. Fish, eh? I must be off. Time is money, you know. Get going boys, full
sails."

Green hailed a passing rickshaw and seated himself comfortably in it. As assistant majordomo he had plenty
of money. Moreover, the Duke and Duchess would have been outraged if he had lowered their prestige by
walking through the city's streets. His vehicle made good time, too, because everybody recognized his livery:
the scarlet and white tricorn hat and the white sleeveless shirt with the Duke's heraldic arms on its chestтИТтИТ
red and green concentric circles pierced by a black arrow.

The street led always downward, for the city had been built on the foothills of the mountains. It wandered
here and there and gave Green plenty of time to think.

The trouble was, he thought, that if the two imprisoned men at Estorya were to die before he got to them he'd
still be lost. He had no idea of how to pilot or navigate a spaceship. He'd been a passenger on a freighter
when it had unaccountably blown up, and he'd been forced to leave the dying vessel in one of those automatic
castaway emergency shells. The capsule had got him down to the surface of this planet and was, as far as he
knew, still up in the hills where he'd left it. After wandering for a week and almost starving to death he'd been