"Jack Vance - Assault on a City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

campus. Giant elms stood dreaming in the wan morning sunlight; beyond
rose the halls of the various academic disciplines. Students streamed past
him: young men and women from the backlands and the far worlds, a few
from Cloudhaven and the patrician suburbs, others from the
working-class areas to the north.
The business of the day was only just beginning. Bo asked a few
questions and was directed to the central cab landing; here he leaned
against a wall and composed himself for a possibly long wait.
An hour passed. Bo frowned through a discarded student journal,
wondering why anyone considered such trivia worth the printing.
A cab dropped from the sky; Alice stepped to the ground. Bo dropped
the journal and watched her, keen as a hawk. She wore a black jacket, a
gray skirt, black stockings reaching up almost to her knees; at her waist
hung her note-taking apparatus. For a moment she stood looking about
her, alert and attentive, mouth curved in a half-smile.
Bo leaned forward, encompassing her with the hot force of his will. He
scrutinized her inch by inch, memorizing each of her attributes. Body:
supple, slender; delightful slim legs. Hair flowing and glowing like brushed
copper. Face: calm, suffused withтАФwhat? gaiety? merriment? optimism?
The air around her quivered with the immediacy of her presence.
Bo resented her assurance. This was the whole point! She was smug!
Arrogant! She thought herself better than ordinary folk because her father
was a commander of the O.T.E. ... Bo had to admit that this was not true.
He would have preferred that it were. Her self-sufficiency was inherent. Bo
envied her: a bubble of self-knowledge opened into his brain. He wanted to
be like her: easy, calm, magnificent. The inner strength of the starlander
was such that she never thought to measure herself against someone else.
True! Alice was neither smug nor arrogant; on the contrary, she knew no
vanity, nor even pride. She was herself; she knew herself to be intelligent,
beautiful and good; nothing more was necessary.
Bo compressed his lips. She must concede him equality. She must know
his strength, recognize his fierce virility.
Tragedy might be latent in the situation. If so, let it come! He was Bo
Histledine, Big Boo the Blond Brute, who did as he pleased, who drove
through life, reckless, feckless, giving way to no one.
 Alice walked toward the halls of learning. Bo followed, twenty feet
behind, admiring the jaunty motion of her body.



5
That morning, immediately after breakfast, Alice had telephoned Waldo
at Cloudhaven. The Waldo who appeared on the screen was far different
from that handsome, serene and gallant Waldo who had arrived by cab
the previous evening to show her the city. This Waldo was pale, gaunt and
grim, and met Alice's sympathetic inspection with a shifting, darting gaze.
"No bones broken," he said in a muffled voice. "I'm lucky there. Once the
jeeks start on a man they'll kill him, and they can't be punished because
they're aliens."
"And this stuff they squirted on you: is it poisonous?"