"H. Beam Piper - Graveyard of Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

"If you can't get good prices, hang onto it and age it. I wish you could see what the bars on Terra charge for a
drink of tenтИТyearтИТold Poictesme."

"This isn't Terra and we aren't selling it by the drink. Only place we can sell brandy is at Storisende spaceport,
and we have to take what the tradingтИТship captains offer. You've been on a rich planet for the last five years,
Conn. You've forgotten what it's like to live in a poorhouse. And that's what Poictesme is."

"Things'll be better from now on, Klem," the mayor said, putting one hand on the old man's shoulder and the
other on Conn's. "Our boy's home. With what he can tell us, we'll be able to solve all our problems. Come on,
let's go up and hear about it."

They entered the wide doorway of the warehouse on the dockтИТlevel floor of the Airport Building and crossed
to the lift. About a dozen others had joined them, all the important men of Litchfield. Inside, Kurt Fawzi's
laborers were floating out cargo for the shipтИТтИТcasks of brandy, of course, and a lot of boxes and crates painted
light blue and marked with the wreathed globe of the Terran Federation and the gold triangle of the Third
FleetтИТArmy Force and the eightтИТpointed red star of Ordnance Service. Long cases of rifles, square boxes of
ammunition, machine guns, crated autoтИТcannon and rockets.

"Where'd that stuff come from?" Conn asked his father. "You dig it up?"

His father chuckled. "That happened since the last time I wrote you. Remember the big underground
headquarters complex in the Calders? Everybody thought it had been all cleaned out years ago. You know, it's
never a mistake to take a second look at anything that everybody believes. I found a lot of sealedтИТoff sections
over there that had never been entered. This stuff's from one of the headquarters defense armories. I have a
gang getting the stuff out. Charley and I flew in after lunch, and I'm going back the first thing tomorrow."

"But there's enough combat equipment on hand to outfit a private army for every man, woman and child on
Poictesme!" Conn objected. "Where are we going to sell this?"

"Storisende spaceport. The tramp freighters are buying it for newly colonized planets that haven't been
industrialized yet. They don't pay much, but it doesn't cost much to get it out, and I've been clearing about
three hundred sols a ton on the spaceport docks. That's not bad, you know."

Three hundred sols a ton. A lifter went by stacked with cases of MтИТ504 submachine guns. Unloaded, one of
them weighed six pounds, and even a used one was worth a hundred sols. Conn started to say something about
that, but then they came to the lift and were crowding onto it.



Graveyard of Dreams 7
 Graveyard of Dreams
He had been in Kurt Fawzi's office a few times, always with his father, and he remembered it as a dim, quiet
place of genteel conviviality and rambling conversations, with deep, comfortable chairs and many ashtrays.
Fawzi's warehouse and brokerage business, and the airline agency, and the government, such as it was, of
Litchfield, combined, made few demands on his time and did not prevent the office from being a favored
loafing center for the town's elders. The lights were bright only over the big table that served, among other
things, as a desk, and the walls were almost invisible in the shadows.

As they came down the hallway from the lift, everybody had begun speaking more softly. Voices were never
loud or excited in Kurt Fawzi's office.