"Heinlein, Robert A- Glory Road" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

There was too much wealth of edges and points, from a two-handed broadsword suitable for chopping down trees to a little dagger meant for a lady's stocking. But I picked up and balanced them all . . . and found there the blade that suited me the way Excalibur suited Arthur.
I've never seen one quite like it so I don't know what to call it. A saber, I suppose, as the blade was faintly curved and razor sharp on the edge and sharp rather far back on the back. But it had a point as deadly as a rapier and the curve was not enough to keep it from being used for thrust and counter quite as well as chopping away meat-axe style. The guard was a bell curved back around the knuckles into a semi-basket but cut away enough to permit full moulinet from any guard.
It balanced in the forte less than two inches from the guard, yet the blade was heavy enough to chop bone. It was the sort of sword that feels as if it were an extension of your body.
The grip was honest sharkskin, molded to my hand. There was a motto chased onto the blade but it was so buried in curlicues that I did not take time to study it out. This girl was mine, we fitted! I returned it and buckled belt and scabbard to my bare waist, wanting the touch of it and feeling like Captain John Carter, Jeddak of Jeddaks, and the Gascon and his three friends all in one.
"Will you not dress, milord Oscar?" Star asked.
"Eh? Oh, certainly--I was just trying it on for size. But--Did Rufo fetch my clothes?"
"Did you, Rufo?"
"His clothes? He wouldn't want those things he was wearing in Nice!"
"What's wrong with wearing Lederhosen with an aloha shirt?" I demanded.
"What? Oh, nothing at all, milord Oscar," Rufo answered hastily. "Live and let live I always say. I knew a man once who wore--never mind. Let me show you what I fetched for you."
I had my choice of everything from a plastic raincoat to full armor. I found the latter depressing because its presence implied that it might be needed. Except for an Army helmet I had never worn armor, didn't want to, didn't know how--and didn't care to mix with rude company that made such protection desirable.
Besides, I didn't see a horse around, say a Percheron or a Clydesdale, and I couldn't see myself hiking in one of those tin suits. I'd be slow as crutches, noisy as a subway, and hot as a phone booth. Sweat off ten pounds in five miles. The quilted longjohns that go under that ironmongery would have been too much alone for such beautiful weather; steel on top would turn me into a walking oven and leave me too weak and clumsy to fight my way out of a traffic ticket.
"Star, you said that--" I stopped. She had finished dressing and hadn't overdone it. Soft leather hiking shoes--buskins really--brown tights, and a short green upper garment halfway between a jacket and a skating dress. This was topped by a perky little hat and the whole costume made her look like a musical corner version of an airline hostess, smart, cute, wholesome, and sexy.
Or maybe Maid Marian, as she had added a double-curve bow about half the size of mine, a quiver, and a dagger. "You," I said, "look like why the riot started."
She dimpled and curtsied. (Star never pretended. She knew she was female, she knew she looked good, she liked it that way.) "You said something earlier," I continued, "about my not needing weapons just yet. Is there any reason why I should wear one of these space suits? They don't look comfortable."
"I don't expect any great danger today," she said slowly. "But this is not a place where one can call the police. You must decide what you need."
"But--Damn it. Princess, you know this place and I don't. I need advice."
She didn't answer. I turned to Rufo. He was carefully studying a treetop. I said, "Rufo, get dressed."
He raised his eyebrows. "Milord Oscar?"
"Schnell! Vite, vite! Get the lead out."
"Okay." He dressed quickly, in an outfit that was a man's version of what Star had selected, with shorts instead of tights.
"Arm yourself," I said, and started to dress the same way, except that I intended to wear field boots. However, there was a pair of those buskins that appeared to be my size, so I tried them on. They snuggled to my feet like gloves and, anyway, my soles were so hardened by a month barefooted on l'Ile du Levant that I didn't need heavy boots.
They were not as medieval as they looked; they zipped up the front and were marked inside Fabrique en France.
Pops Rufo had taken the bow he had used before, selected a sword, and had added a dagger. Instead of a dagger I picked out a Solingen hunting knife. I looked longingly at a service .45, but didn't touch it. If "they," whoever they were, had a local Sullivan Act, I would go along with the gag.
Star told Rufo to pack, then squatted down with me at a sandy place by the stream and drew a sketch map--route south, dropping downgrade and following the stream except for short cuts, until we reached the Singing Waters. There we would camp for the night.
I got it in my head. "Okay. Anything to warn me about? Do we shoot first? Or wait for them to bomb us?"
"Nothing that I expect, today. Oh, there's a carnivore about three times the size of a lion. But it is a great coward; it won't attack a moving man."
"A fellow after my own heart. All right, we'll keep moving."
"If we do see human beings--I don't expect it--it might be well to nock a shaft . . . but not raise your bow until you feel it is necessary. But I'm not telling you what to do, Oscar; you must decide. Nor will Rufo let fly unless he sees you about to do so."
Rufo had finished packing. "Okay, let's go," I said. We set out. Rufo's little black box was now rigged as a knapsack and I did not stop to wonder how he could carry a couple of tons on his shoulders. An anti-grav device like Buck Rogers, maybe. Chinese coolie blood. Black magic. Hell, that teakwood chest alone could not have fitted into that backpack by a factor of 30 to I, not to mention the arsenal and assorted oddments.
There is no reason to wonder why I didn't quiz Star as to where we were, why we were there, how we had got there, what we were going to do, and the details of these dangers I was expected to face. Look, Mac, when you are having the most gorgeous dream of your life and just getting to the point, do you stop to tell yourself that it is logically impossible for that particular babe to be in the hay with you--and thereby wake yourself up? I knew, logically, that everything that had happened since I read that silly ad had been impossible.
So I chucked logic.
Logic is a feeble reed, friend. "Logic" proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs wont work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.
I liked the situation. I didn't want to wake up, whether in bed, or in a headshrinker ward. Most especially I did not want to wake up still back in that jungle, maybe with that face wound still fresh and no helicopter. Maybe little brown brother had done a full job on me and sent me to Valhalla. Okay, I liked Valhalla.
I was swinging along with a sweet sword knocking against my thigh and a much sweeter girl matching my strides and a slave-serf-groom-something sweating along behind us, doing the carrying and being our "eyes-behind." Birds were singing and the landscape had been planned by master landscape architects and the air smelled sweet and good. If I never dodged a taxi nor read a headline again, that suited me.
That longbow was a nuisance--but so is an M-l. Star had her little bow slung, shoulder to hip. I tried that, but it tended to catch on things. Also, it made me nervous not to have it ready since she had admitted a chance of needing it. So I unslung it and carried it in my left hand, strung and ready.
We had one alarum on the morning hike. I heard Rufo's bowstring go thwung! --and I whirled and had my own bow ready, arrow nocked, before I saw what was up.
Or down, rather. A bird like a dusky grouse but larger. Rufo had picked it off a branch, right through the neck. I made note not to compete with him again in archery, and to get him to coach me in the fine points.
He smacked his lips and grinned. "Supper!" For the next mile he plucked it as we walked, then hung it from his belt.
We stopped for lunch one o'clockish at a picnic spot that Star assured me was defended, and Rufo opened his box to suitcase size, and served us lunch: cola cuts, crumbly Provencal cheese, crusty French bread, pears, and two bottles of Chablis. After lunch Star suggested a siesta. The idea was appealing; I had eaten heartily and shared only crumbs with the birds, but I was surprised. "Shouldn't we push on?"
"You must have a language lesson, Oscar."
I must tell them at Ponce de Leon High School the better way to study languages. You lie down on soft grass near a chuckling stream on a perfect day, and the most beautiful woman in any world bends over you and looks you in the eyes. She starts speaking softly in a language you do not understand.
After a bit her big eyes get bigger and bigger . . . and bigger . . . and you sink into them.
Then, a long time later, Rufo says, "Erbas, Oscar, 't knila voorsht."
"Okay," I answered, "I am getting up. Don't rush me."
That is the last word I am going to set down in a language that doesn't fit our alphabet. I had several more lessons, and won't mention them either, and from then on we spoke this lingo, except when I was forced to span gaps by asking in English. It is a language rich in profanity and in words for making love, and richer than English in some technical subjects--but with surprising holes in it. There is no word for "lawyer" for example.
About an hour before sundown we came to the Singing Waters.
We had been traveling over a high, wooded plateau. The brook where we had caught the trout had been joined by other streams and was now a big creek. Below us, at a place we hadn't reached yet, it would plunge over high cliffs in a super-Yosemite fall. But here, where we stopped to camp, the water had cut a notch into the plateau, forming cascades, before it took that dive.
"Cascades" is a weak word. Upstream, downstream, everywhere you looked, you saw waterfalls--big ones thirty or fifty feet high, little ones a mouse could have jumped up, every size in between. Terraces and staircases of them there were, smooth water green from rich foliage overhead and water white as whipped cream as it splashed into dense foam.
And you heard them. Tiny falls tinkled in silvery soprano, big falls rumbled in basso profundo. On the grassy alp where we camped it was an ever-present chorale; in the middle of the falls you had to snout to make yourself heard.