"Last Castle, The by Jack Vance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Award Stories 2)

their cotes. They screamed strident insults as they flapped east
toward Hagedorn, now the last castle of Earth.
Pour months before, the Meks had appeared in the park
before Janeil, fresh from the Sea Island massacre.
Climbing to the turrets and balconies, sauntering the Sunset
Promenade, from ramparts and parapets, the gentlemen and
ladies of Janeil, some two thousand in all, looked down at the
browngold warriors. Their mood was complex: amused
indifference, flippant disdain, over a substratum of doubt and
foreboding. All these moods were the product of three basic
circumstances: their own exquisitely subtle civilization, the
security provided by Janeil's wall and the fact that they could
think of nothing to do to alter the circumstances.
The Janeil Meks had long since departed to join the revolt.
There only remained Phanes, Peasants and Birds from which
to fashion what would have been the travesty of a punitive
..force.
At the moment there seemed no need for such a force.
Janeil was deemed impregnable. The walls, two hundred feet
tall, were black- rock-melt contained in the meshes of a
silver-blue steel alloy. Solar cells provided energy for all the
needs of the castle, and in the event of emergency food could
be synthesized from carbon dioxide and water vapor, as well
as syrup for Phanes, Peasants and Birds. Such a need was not
envisaged. Janeil was self-sufficient and secure, though incon-
veniences might arise when machinery broke down and there
were no Meks to repair it. The situation, then, was disturbing
but hardly desperate. During the day the gentlemen so in-
clined brought forth energy-guns and sport-rifles and killed as
many Meks as the extreme range allowed.
After dark the Meks brought forward power-wagons and
earth-movers, and began to raise a dike around Janeil.
The folk of the castle watched without comprehension until
the dike reached a height of fifty feet and dirt began to spill
down against the walls. Then the dire purpose of the Meks
became apparent, and insouciance gave way to dismal fore-
boding.
All the gentlemen of Janeil were erudite in at least one
realm of knowledge. Certain were mathematical theoreticians,
others had made a profound study of the physical sciences.
Some of these, with a detail of Peasants to perform the sheer
physical exertion, attempted to restore the energy-cannon to
functioning condition. Unluckily, the cannon had not been
maintained in good order. Various components were obvi-
ously corroded or damaged. Conceivably these components
might have been replaced from the Mek shops on the second
sub-level, but none of the group had any knowledge of the
Mek nomenclature or warehousing system. Warrick Madency
Arban (which is to say, Arban of the Madency family on the
Warrick clan) suggested that a work-force of Peasants search