"C. L. Moore - The Cold Gray God" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

THE COLD GRAY GOD
Snow fell over Righa, pole city of Mats. Bitter snow, whirling in ice-hard
particles on the thin, keen wind that always seems to blow through Righa's
streets. These cobblestoned ways were nearly empty today. Squat stone houses
crouched low under the assaults of that storm-laden wind, and the dry snow
eddied in long gusts down the reaches of the Lakklan, Righa's central street.
The few pedestrians along the Lakklan huddled collars high about their ears
and hurried over,the cobbles.
But there was one figure in the street that did not hurry. It was a woman's
figure, and by die swing of her gait and the high poise of her head one might
guess that she was young, but it would be no more than a guess, for the fur
cloak she clutched about her muffled every line of her body and the peaked
hood of it hid her face. That fur was the sleek white hide of the almost
extinct saltland snow-cat, so that one might presuppose her wealth. She walked
with a swinging grace rarely encountered in Righa's streets. For Righa is an
outlaw
city, and young women, wealthy and beautiful and unattended, are seldom seen
upon the Lakklan.
She strolled slowly down the broad, uneven way, her long hooded cloak making a
white enigma of her. But she was somehow alien to this bleak, bitter scene.
That almost dancing litheness which attended her motion, eloquent even through
the concealing folds of rich snow-cat fur, was not a characteristic of Martian
women, even the pink beauties of the canals. Indefinably she was
foreign-exotically foreign.
From the shadow of her hood an eager gaze roved the street, avidly scanning
the few faces she passed. They were hard-featured faces for the most part,
bleak and cold as the gray city about them. And the eyes that met hers boldly
or slyly, according to the type of passer-by, were curiously alike in then-
furtiveness, their shadow of alert and hunted watching. For men came to Righa
quietly, by devious ways, and dwelt in seclusion and departed without
ostentation. And their eyes were always wary.
The girl's gaze flicked by them and went on. If they stared after her down the
street she did not seem to know, or greatly to care. She paced unhurriedly on
over the cobbles.
Ahead of her a broad, low door opened to a burst of noise and music, and warm
light streamed briefly out into the gray day as a man stepped over the sill
and swung the door shut behind him. Sidelong she watched the man as he belted
his heavy coat of brown pole-deer hide and stepped briskly out into the
street. He was tall, brown as leather, hard-featured under the pole-deer cap
pulled low over his eyes. They were startling, those eyes, cold and steady,
icily calm. Indefinably he was of Earth. His scarred dark face had a faintly
piratical look, and he was wolfishly lean in his spaceman's leather as he
walked lightly down the Lakklan, turning up the deer-hide collar about his
ears with one hand. The other, his right, was hidden in the pocket of his
coat.
The woman swerved when she saw him. He watched her subtly swaying approach
without a flicker of expression on his face. But when she laid a milkily white
hand upon his arm
he gave a queer little start, involuntarily, like a shiver quickly suppressed.
A ripple of annoyance crossed his face briefly and was gone, as if the