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

fingertips. "This is a statement from a certain Polinasia Glianthe,
occupation: prostitute. 'Last week I paid Big Bo Histledine one hundred
and seventy-five dollars, otherwise he said he would cut my ears.'"
Bo made a contemptuous sound. "Who are you going to believe? Me or
some swayback old she-dog who never made a hundred and seventy-five
the best week of her life?"
Dalby forbore a direct response. "Get yourself a job. You are required to
support yourself in an acceptable manner. If you can't find work, I'll find it
for you. There's plenty out on Jugurtha." He referred to that world
abhorred by social delinquents for its rehabilitation farms.
Bo was impressed by Dalby's chilly succinctness. His last probation
officer had been an urbanite whose instinctive tactic was empathy. Bo
found it a simple matter to explain his lapses. The probation officer in
turn was cheered by Bo's ability to distinguish between right and wrong,
at least verbally. Inspector Dalby, however, obviously cared not a twitch
for the pain or travail which afflicted Bo's psyche. Cursing and seething,
Bo took himself to the City Employment Office and was dispatched to the
Orion Spaceyards as an apprentice metalworker, at a wage he considered
a bad joke. One way or another he'd outwit Dalby! In the meantime he
found himself under the authority of a foreman equally unsympathetic:
another ex-spaceman named Edmund Sarkane. Sarkane explained to Bo
that to gam an hour's pay he must expend an hour's exertion, which Bo
found a novel concept. Sarkane could not be serious! He attempted to
circumvent Sarkane's precept by a variety of methods, but Sarkane had
dealt with a thousand apprentices and Bo had known only a single
Sarkane. Whenever Bo thought to relax in the shadows, or ignore a
troublesome detail, Sarkane's voice rasped upon his ears, and Bo began to
wonder if after all he must accept the unacceptable. The work, after all,
was not in itself irksome; and Sarkane's contempt was almost a challenge
to Bo to prove himself superior in every aspect, even the craft of
metal-working, to Sarkane himself. At times to his own surprise and
displeasure he found himself working diligently.
The spaceyards themselves he found remarkable. His eye, like that of
most urbanites, was sensitive; he noted the somber concord of color: black
structures, ocher soil, gray concrete, reds, blues and olive-greens of signs
and symbols, all animated by electric glitters, fires and steams, the
constant motion of stern-faced workmen. The hulls loomed upon the sky,
for these Bo felt a curious emotion: half awe, half antipathy; they
symbolized the far worlds which Bo, as an urbanite, had not the slightest
intention of visiting, not even as a tourist. Why probe these far regions?
He knew the look, odor and feel of these worlds through the agency of his
term; he had seen nothing which wasn't done better here in Hant.
If one had money. Money! A word resonant with magic. From where he
worked with his buffing machine he could see south to Cloudhaven,
floating serene and golden in the light of afternoon. Here was where he
would live, so he promised himself, and muttered slow oaths of longing as
he looked. Money was what he needed.
The rasp of Sarkane's voice intruded upon his daydreams. "Put a
Number Five head on your machine and bring it over to the aerie bays.
Look sharp; there's a hurry-up job we've got to get out today." He made