"George R. R. Martin -- Second Helpings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

Second Helpings
Analog
November, 1985

It was more habit than hobby, and it was certainly not anything acquired deliberately, with malice
aforethought; nonetheless, it had undoubtedly been acquired. Haviland Tuf collected spacecraft.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say he accumulated spacecraft. He certainly had the room for them. When
Tuf had first set foot upon the Ark, he had found there five black, rakish, delta-winged shuttles, the
gutted hull of a big-bellied Rhiannese merchant, and three alien starships: a heavily-armed Hruun fighter
and two much stranger craft whose histories and builders remained an enigma. To that ragtag fleet was
added TufтАЩs own damaged trading vessel, the Cornucopia of Excellent Goods at Low Prices.
That was only the beginning. In his travels, Tuf found other ships gathering on his landing deck much as
dust balls gather under a computer console and papers gather on a bureaucratтАЩs desk.
On Freehaven, the negotiatorтАЩs one-man driveshift courier had been so badly scored by enemy fire while
running the blockade that Tuf had been obliged to provide return passage in the shuttle ManticoreтАФafter
a contract had been arrived at, of course. Thus he had acquired one driveshift courier.
On Gonesh, the elephant priests had never actually seen an elephant. Tuf had cloned them a few herds,
and for variety had thrown in a brace of mastodon, a wooly mammoth, and a green Trygian
trumpet-tusker. The Goneshi, who wished no commerce with the rest of humanity, had paid his fee with
the fleet of decrepit starships their colonizing ancestors had arrived in. Tuf had been able to sell two of
the ships to museums and the rest of the fleet to a scrapyard, but he had kept one ship on a whim.
On Karaleo, he had bested the Lord of the Burnished Golden Pride in a drinking contest, and had won a
luxurious lionboat for his troubles, although the loser had ingraciously removed most of the ornate
solid-gold trim before handing it over.
The Artificers of Mhure, who were inordinately proud of their craftmanship, had been so pleased by the
clever dragonettes Tuf had provided to check their plague of wing-rats that they had given him an
iron-and-silver dragon-shuttle with huge bat-wings.
The knights of St. Christopher, whose resort world had been robbed of much of its charm by the
depredations of huge flying saurians they called dragons (partly for effect and partly due to a lack of
imagination), had been similarly pleased when Tuf had provided them with georges, tiny hairless simians
who loved nothing better than to feast on dragon eggs. So the knights had given him a ship as well. It
looked like an eggтАФan egg built of stone and wood. Inside the yolk were deep padded seats of oiled
dragon leather, a hundred fantastical brass levers, and a stained-glass mosaic where a viewscreen ought
to be. The wooden walls were hung with rich hand-woven tapestries portraying great feats of chivalry.
The ship didnтАЩt work, of courseтАФthe viewscreen didnтАЩt view, the brass levers did nothing, and the life
support systems couldnтАЩt support life. Tuf accepted it nonetheless.
And so it had gone, a ship here and a ship there, until his landing deck looked like an interstellar
junkyard. Thus it was, when Haviland Tuf determined to make his return to SтАЩuthlam, that he had a wide
variety of starships at his disposal.
He had long ago reached the conclusion that returning in the Ark itself would be unwise. After all, when
he had left the SтАЩuthlamese system, the Planetary Defense Flotilla had been in hot pursuit, determined to
confiscate the seedship. The SтАЩuthlamese were a highly advanced and technologically sophisticated
people who would undoubtedly have made their warships faster and more dangerous in the five standard
years since Tuf had last gone among them. Therefore, a scouting sortie was imperative. Fortunately,
Haviland Tuf considered himself a master of disguise.
He took the Ark out of drive in the cold, empty darkness of interstellar space a light-year from SтАЩulstar,
and rode down to his landing deck to inspect his fleet. At length he decided upon the lionboat. It was
large and swift, its star-drive and life-support systems were functional, and Karaleo was far enough
removed from SтАЩuthlam so that commerce between the two worlds was unlikely. Therefore any flaws in
his imposture would most likely go unnoticed. Before he made his departure, Haviland Tuf dyed his