"Mercedes Lackey - A Tail Of Two Skittys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

object of feline affection was in the middle of negotiations or a session of
Council or not. Whenever one wished to playтАФalthough with the number of
kreshta about, there was very little energy left over for playingтАФeverything
else was set aside for that moment. And when one brought in a trophy kreshta,
tail and ears held high with pride, the entire court applauded. Astra was
introduced to Furrball at SKitty's insistence. Noses were sniffed, and the two
rubbed cheeks. It appeared that Mama's matchmaking was going to work.

The three humans and the pleased feline headed back across the city to the
spaceport and the Fence around it. The city of the Lacu'un was incredibly
attractive, much more so than any other similar city Dick had ever visited.
Because of the rapidity with which the kreshta multiplied given any food and
shelter, the streets were kept absolutely spotless, and the buildings clean
and in repair. Most had walls about them, giving the inhabitants little
islands of privacy. The walls of the wealthy were of carved stone; those of
the poor of cast concrete. In all cases, ornamentation was the rule, not the
exception.

The Lacu'un themselves walked the streets of their city garbed in delicate,
flowing robes, or shorter more practical versions of the same garments.
Graceful and handsome, they resembled avians rather than reptiles; their skin
varied in shade from a dark brown to a golden tan, and their heads bore a kind
of frill like an iguana's, that ran from the base of the neck to a point just
above and between the eyes.

Their faces were capable of something like a smile, and the expression meant
the same for them as it did for humans. Most of them smiled when they saw Dick
and SKitty; although the kreshta-destroying abilities of the cat were not
something any of them would personally feel the impact of for many years,
perhaps generations, they still appreciated what the cats Dick had introduced
could do. The kreshta had been a plague upon them for as long as their history
recorded, even being so bold as to steal the food from plates and injure
unguarded infants. For as long as that history, it had seemed that there would
never be a solution to the depredations of the little beasts. But nowтАФthe most
pious claimed the advent of the cats was a sign of the gods' direct
intervention and blessing, and even the skeptics were thrilled at the thought
that an end to the plague was in sight. It was unlikely that, even with a cat
in every household, the kreshta would ever be destroyedтАФbut such things as
setting a guard on sleeping babies and locking meals in metal containers set
into the tables could probably be eliminated.

When they crossed the Fence into Terran territory, however, the surroundings
dropped in quality by a magnitude or two. Dick felt obscurely ashamed of his
world whenever he looked at the shabby, garish spaceport "facilities" that
comprised most of the Terran spaceport area. At least the headquarters that
Captain Singh and CatsEye had established were handsome; adaptations of the
natives' own architecture, in cast concrete with walls decorated with stylized
stars, spaceships, and suggestions of slit-pupiled eyes. SolarQuest and UVN,
the other two Companies that had been given Trade permits, were following
CatsEye's lead, and had hired the same local architects and contractors to