"E. C. Tubb - Dumarest 23 - World of Promise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tubb E. C)

woman who had spoken before.

"That's enough, Lou! If you want to stare at that thing then do
it alone."

"Wait a few more minutes."

"No! I'm going! Come with me or don't bother to call again!"

The threat sent him to accompany her as she moved from the
crowd. Others were not so squeamish. A guard yelled as a
half-dozen young men, none robed, all a little intoxicated, thrust
striped wands through the bars in an attempt to goad the beast.

"Are you mad? Back there! Back, damn you!"

"Fools!" The head guard glared his displeasure. "Have they
nothing better to do?"

"Is it safe? Could it break loose?"

"No." The guard smiled as he reassured the man who'd asked.
"But it's best not to torment the creature. Anger makes it hard to
handle and we like to keep it quiet."

Nonetheless dilettantes laughed as they threw stones into the
cage. Bored, jaded, the idle parasites of a strugglng culture, they
considered themselves above the restrictions binding others.
Dumarest heard the guard yell again as he moved away. Heard
the mocking reply, the sudden snarl from the creature which
filled the air with the raw taint of primeval fear, roar repeated as
again the men goaded the beast.
 The guards were fools. They bore clubs and should have used
them. Instead they added to the din with futile shouting, a
stupidity matched by the original error of displaying the
creature in the first place.

The noise faded as he merged with the throng in the midway,
listening to the siren call of a young girl offering a variety of
exotic experiences: sensitapes which gave a full-sense illusion of
reality; analogues which conveyed alternate pleasures; sexual
coupling of beasts, killing, burning, dying, the terror of the
chase, the thrill of the stalk; drugs to heighten perception, others
to increase the sensitivity of nerves so that a touch became an
ecstasy, a kiss unendurable pleasure; compounds to dull, to
distort, to change; salves, pills, tablets, tonicsтАФthe girl offered
them all.

"And you, my lord?" Her eyes met Dumarest's. "Is there
nothing you desire?"