"Ardath Mayhar - Khi to Freedom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mayhar Ardath)

thing in anyoneтАЩs world I wanted, I opened my eyes cautiously and slanted
them as far as I could manage, back and forth without moving my head. I
could see nothing but the browny-red bark of the tree and a fan of bright
leaves. Well. I made a good show of waking up, sitting up and stretching
as normally as I could manage. As I turned to hang my legs off the wide
branch, I looked up into a pair of curious, dark-green eyes. They were set
in a face covered with green fur, and that brought me up with a start.
My inadvertent motion startled the creature. It drew back into the
branches, which were thick enough to hide even its obtrusive coloration. It
had to be a Varlian. It was against all logic that a green-furred creature
had evolved upon a planet with warm-colored foliage, and the readouts of
the lifeboat had assured me that it was setting me down in a spot where it
was midsummer. This was not autumnal foliage. So that must be a
Varlian.
I sat still, waiting for the devouring curiosity of its kind to bring it back
into view. They had been, I well knew from my training and
library-absorbing, widely distributed on suitable planets by a race that my
kind called the Ffryll. From the scanty information available when Man
arrived in this galaxy we had learned that the Ffryll had been a fairly
harmless, curious, spacefaring race with one trait that eventually proved
fatal to them. They had an insatiable appetite for one small creature
halfway between monkey and man. They planted it on planets with
climates that let them thrive and multiply (first making certain that no
intelligent inhabitants objected) and allowed them to breed. This had
insured that their favorite delicacy would be available no matter what
their comings and goings about the systems or how far they might wander
from their home planet.
It hadnтАЩt worked all that well. A planetful of Varlian had contracted an
internal parasite that did them no harm at all. It just killed off all the
Ffryll. That much had been chronicled by a very ancient feline-descended
race, the Fssa, who had been much amused by the mishap, as they
preferred Varlian to Ffryll, anyway.
I had met Varlian on most of the planets the Ginli had investigated. I
liked them, too. They were about the size of a ten-year-old human child,
and their fur was almost the exact shade of the lime sherbet that my
mother used to make once a year from expensive, imported limes, at
Festival-time. Their faces were so nearly human that you forgot the long,
brachiating arms, the prehensile toes, and the short, strong tails.
If this was a Varlian, and the species had survived here for so long, I
knew that there could be no large arboreal predators on the planet. Or at
least on this continent. That was a relief. ItтАЩs hard to sleep with all your
senses alert for surprise attack.
While I reviewed my Varlian lore, the creature crept back into view. I
didnтАЩt move. Soon it edged nearer. After about a half-hour we were sitting
within armтАЩs-length of one another, looking eye into eye. Though I sat still,
it slithered about, scratching a haunch or an ear, wriggling its nose. Now
and again it risked laying a pink-palmed hand for an instant upon the toes
of my boots or the sleeve of my overall. When it was confident enough to
touch me on the knee and put its face close to mine, I knew it was safe to
move again. I stretched a cramped leg and did a bit of scratching on my