"Smith, E E 'Doc' - SubSpace Vol 2 - Subspace Encounter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

slow and a bit awkward and a couple of inches out of place in coping with a triple feint;
and Rodnar, with chin and left shoulder protecting the vital areas of heart and throat,
drove straight in for the kill.

He knew he'd have to take a savage counter-stroke, a slash or a stab, but there'd be
only the one and in his position it wouldn't kill him-this was too good a chance altogether
to miss. Wherefore he drove in, swinging. He deflected the champion's slashing stab to
shoulder and arm and ribs, even while he was driving his own blade to the hilt into
unresisting flesh and twisting it viciously, in a mangling spiral, as he withdrew it.

The ex-champion collapsed; and Rodnar, deafened by a roar of noise that seemed
almost solid, stood there, holding his ghastly, gaping, blood-spurting wound together as
best he could with his right hand, while his surgeon with his tool-kit and Knuaire and
Marrjyl with a stretcher rushed up to him. Rodnar did lie on the stretcher while the doctor
did his preliminary work. That done, however; he stood up and, refusing all help and
acknowledging the bedlam-roar of the crowd with a couple of nods, he walked under his
own power to and through the fighters' exit of Games Hall One.

Outside that exit, however, he was very glad indeed to rest most of his weight on his
friends' shoulders, and to let them half-carry him to the ambulance that was to take him
to the hospital.


II - THE GRANT

Nothing like the civilization and culture and government of the Justiciate and its Tyranny
had ever come to flower on Tellus or on any other planet of Tellurian civilization. To
approximate them there would have to be something possessing in combination the
dictatorship of Communist Russia, a caste system but little less rigid than that of old
India, the brutality and savagery of ancient Rome, and a technological advancement fully
equal to that of the Western Hemisphere of Tellus.

Impossible'? It might seem so. Nevertheless, it worked. Creakingly at times, it is true;
and by dint of occasional bloodlettings and purges of horrible scope and type; but, after
its fashion, it had been working for many thousands of Justician Standard years. It had
been kept working, all these millennia, by the Tyrant's enforcement arm; the hated and
feared planetary police, the Guard of the Person-disrespectfully called the "Purps" from
the gold- and silver-trimmed purple splendor of their full-dress uniforms.

At the top of this sweet-smelling heap there was one and only one o'stat,
(ovcrstat-above status or zero status) the Dictator-the Tyrant-the Supreme Grand
Justice-His Magnificence Sonrathendak Ranjak of Slaar.

In Status One to Status Five, inclusive, with their status numbers carried out to three
decimal places from 1.000 to 5.999, were the members of the Dictator's Board of
Advisors, the members of the Council of Grand Justices, and a few very VIPs. In Status
Six to Status Fifteen, equally finely graded, were all other major executives of the
Justiciate. Any one of these persons could act as judge and jury and could impose the
death penalty.