"Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 2 - Tar Aiym Krang" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

what might be described as an olfactory reputation. It was a truth that gourmets came from as far
away as Terra and Proycon merely to sit on the outskirts of the marketplace and hold long and
spirited competitions in which the participants would attempt to identify only the wisps of
flavour that were wafted outwards on the damp breeze.
The reason for the circular arrangement was simple. A businessman could fortify himself on
the outskirts and then plunge mio the whirl of commerce without having, to worry about being cut
down in the midst of an important trailsaction by a sudden gust of, say, pungent prego-smoke from
the bahnwood fires. Most of the day the vast circle served admirably well, but during the prime
meal hours it made the marketplace resemble more than ever that perspicacious tourist's analogy of
the ebb and flow of a sea.
Flinx paused at the stand of old Kiki, a vendor of sweets, and bought a small thisk-cake.
This was a concoction made from a base of a tough local hybrid wheat. Inside, it was filled with
fruit-pieces and berries and small, meaty parma-niits, recently ripened. The finished product was
then dipped in a vat of warmish honey-gold and allowed to harden. It was rough on the teeth, but,
ob, what it did for this palate It had one drawback: consistency. Biting into think was like
chewing old spacesuit insulation. But it had a high energy content, the parma-nuts were mildly
narcotic, and Flinx felt the need of some sort of mild stimulant before performing.
Above the voices and the smells, above all, Drallar could be viewed.
The edifices of the marketplace were fairly low, but outside the food crescents one could
see ancient walls, remnants of Old City. Scattered behind and among were the buildings where the
more important commerce took place. The lifeblood of Moth was here, not in the spectacular stalls
below. Every day the economies of a dozen worlds were traded away in the dingy back 'rooms and
offices of those old-new structures. There the gourmet restaurants catered to the rich sportsmen
returning from the lakes, and turned up their noses and shut their windows against the plebeian
effluvia assailing them from the food stalls below. There the taxidermists plied their noisome
arts, stuffing downy Yax'm pelts and mounting the ebony nightmare heads of the horned Demmichin
Devilope.
Beyond rose the apartment houses where the middle and lower classes lived, those of the
poorer characterized by few windows and cracking plaster, and those of the better-off by the
wonderful multistoried murals painted by the gypsy artists, and by the brilliant azurine tiles
which kept the houses warm in winter and cool in summer. Still further off rose the isolated tower
groupings of the rich inurbs, with their hanging gardens and reinforced crystal terraces. These
soared loftily above the noise and clamour of the commonplace, sparkling as jewelled giraffes amid
each morning fog.
Rising from the centre of the city to dominate a 13 was the great palace of the rulers of
Drallar. Generations of kings had added to it each stamping a section here, awing there, with his
own personality. Therein dwelt King Dewe Nog Na and his court. Sometimes he would take a lift to
the topmost minaret, and there, seated comfortably on its slowly revolving platform, leisurely
survey the impossible anthill that constituted his domain.
But the most beautiful thing about Moth was not Drallar, with its jewelled towers and
chromatic citizenry) nor the innumerable lakes and forests, nor the splendid and variegated things
that dwelt therein. It was the planet itself. It was that which had given to it a name and made it
unique in the Arm. That which had first attracted men to the system. Ringed planets were rare
enough.
Moth was a. winged planet.


file:///F|/rah/Alan%20Dean%20Foster/Foster,%20...ean%20-%20Flinx%202%20-%20Tar-Aiym%20Krang.txt (3 of 79) [1/16/03 6:44:31 PM]
 file:///F|/rah/Alan%20Dean%20Foster/Foster,%20Alan%20Dean%20-%20Flinx%202%20-%20Tar-Aiym%20Krang.txt