"Andre Norton - Brother To Shadows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

continents of Asborgan, plus stray near-poisonous mixtures brought from off-world. To
add to the wealth of drinkables there were the dealers in flesh, who made their wares
visible in half-curtained windows during the busy hours of the night, and innumerable
forbidden drugs. The police of Asborgan, the old city, had long ago washed their hands of
any responsibility for what went on there. Those inhabitants who were permanent might
look after themselves, which most of them were viciously able to do, or disappeared for
good, and those off-worlders of the better sort kept out of the "Stinkhole" and maintained
their private protections. A few spacers now and then would wander in, but they came in
pairs or trios and with stun guns in open holsters well displayed. Those natives from the
lowlands beyond the city were seldom fool enough to even think of penetrating into that
foul morass and anyway, having come to town, they automatically hunted shelter and
amusement of the kind they had always known in the old city.

Jofre's hands moved twice. He had set "No see" pattern in his mind before he had started
down the street which ran to the Stinkhole. Though he was well exercised in that
maneuver, he had never employed it before except as an ordered drill. But all he had
heard suggested that it should work. It was not that an invader could actually render
himself invisible, rather that he projected some type of thought which shuttered him from
casual sight of those he would move among.

The fetid odor gripped at one's throat. Coming from the austere cleanliness of the
mountains, the order of the Lairs, this was like a foul fog. Almost one could see the
vapors of decay and excrement rising from the broken pavement. The hour was one strike
past sundown and the quarter was coming to life.

Several paces ahead Jofre saw his first spacers. They were clad in close fitting one-piece
suits, a brownish-grey which almost matched the discolored walls about them, but was
relieved on standing collars and shoulders with colored patches, not all of the same
design, symbols he supposed of either rank or duties. This trio were young and they
walked with caution, glancing from side to side. He did not understand the remarks which
floated back to him but somehow he sensed that they considered this visit to be
something of a challenge.

Because he had nothing else in the way of a guide, Jofre kept in their wake. When they
halted before a wide open door which was hung with a billowing curtain of grease-
stained faxweed stuff colored a sun-brilliant orange, he paused, too, a step or so before
him the opening to an alleyway.

There was a clangor of Whine drums from that doorway loud enough to drown out what
the spacers were sayingтАФ they seemed to be in argument on some point. In fact those
wailing notes were loud enough to drown most of the noises of this portion of the street.

Sound might be so blocked but not instinct. Jofre's head jerked to the left. TroubleтАФback
in that black pocket of an alley. Not any cry of help to be heard with the ear, rather the
reaction of someone fighting against odds. And in spite of the nature of the Stinkhole and
the fact that its dangers should not be lightly taken Jofre movedтАФinto the alley.