"Jack Vance - Alastor 2262 - Trullion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

OLD MAN: The Connatic would have to be a genius to satisfy both you and the servants.
They'd live only to box your ears. Now get on with your work.
Or again:
YOUNG MAN: Never go near Lusz, I beseech you! The Connatic would take you for his own!

GIRL (mischievously): Then what would you do? YOUNG MAN: I'd rebel! I'd be the most magnificent
starmenter* ever to terrify the skies! At last I'd conquer the power of Alastor-Wilhelm, Connatic
and all-and win you back for my very own.
* starmenters: pirates and marauders, whose occasional places of refuge are the. so-called
"starments."


GIRL: You're gallant, but never never never would the Connatic choose ordinary little me;
already the most beautiful women of Alastor attend him at Lusz. YOUNG MAN: What a merry life he
must lead! To be Connatic: this is my dream! GIRL: (makes fretful sound and becomes cool.)
Lusz, the Connatic's palace, is indeed a remarkable structure, rising ten thousand feet above
the sea on five great pylons. Visitors roam the lower promenades; from every world of Alastor
Cluster they come, and from places beyond-the Darkling Regions, the Primarchic, the Erdic Sector,
the Rubrimar Cluster, and all the other parts of the galaxy which men have made their own.

Above the public promenades are governmental offices, ceremoniakhalls, a communications complex,
and somewhat higher, the famous Ring of the Worlds, with an informational chamber for each
inhabited planet of the cluster. The highest pinnacles contain the Connatic's personal quarters.
They penetrate the clouds and sometimes pierce through to the upper sky. When sunlight glistens on
its iridescent surfaces, Lusz, the palace of the Connatic, is a wonderful sight and is often
reckoned the most inspiring artifact of the human race.

Chapter 1
***
Chamber 2262 along the Ring of the Worlds pertains to Trullion, the lone planet of a small white
star, one spark in a spray curling out toward the cluster's edge. Trullion is a small world, for



file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-...ack%20Vance%20-%20Alastor%202262-Trullion.txt (2 of 82) [12/29/2004 12:50:33 AM]
 file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/Jack%20Vance%20-%20Alastor%202262-Trullion.txt

the most part water, with a single narrow continent, Merlank,* at the equator. Great banks of
cumulus drift in from the sea and break against the central mountains; hundreds of rivers return
down broad valleys where fruit and cereals grow so plentifully as to command no value.

The original settlers upon Trullion brought with them those habits of thrift and zeal which had
promoted survival in a previously harsh environment; the first era of Trill history produced a
dozen wars, a thousand fortunes, a caste of hereditary aristocrats, and a waning of the initial
dynamism. The Trill commonalty asked itself: Why toil, why carry weapons when a life of feasts,
singing, revelry and ease is an equal option? In the space of three generations old Trullion
became a memory. The ordinary Trill now worked as circumstances directed: to prepare for a feast,
to indulge his taste for hussade, to earn a pulsor for his boat or a pot for his kitchen or a
length of cloth for his paray, that easy shirtlike garment worn by man and woman alike.
Occasionally he tilled his lush acres, fished the ocean, netted the river, harvested wild fruit,