"Jack Vance - Green Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

Fair stepped boldly forth from the pentagon, strung forty yards of green ribbon down the road in the
shape of a narrow V. "Go forth into the realm of green magic," he told the monster. "The ribbons reach
forty miles; walk to the end, turn about, return, and then fall back, return to the earth from which you
rose."

The golem turned, shuffled into the V of green ribbon, shaking off clods of mold, jarring the ground
with its ponderous tread.

Fair watched the squat shape dwindle, recede, yet never reach the angle of the magic V. He returned to
his panel truck, tuned the television receiver to the golem's eye, and surveyed the fantastic vistas of the
green realm.



Two elementals of the green realm met on a spun-silver landscape. They were Jaadian and Misthemar,
and they fell to discussing the earthen monster which had stalked forty miles through the region known
as Cil; which then, turning in its tracks, had retraced its steps, gradually increasing its pace until at the
end it moved in a shambling rush, leaving a trail of clods on the fragile moth-wing mosaics.

"Events, events, events," Misthemar fretted, "they crowd the chute of time till the bounds bulge. Or then
again, the course is as lean and spare as a stretched tendon... But in regard to this incursion..." He paused
for a period of reflection, and silver clouds moved over his head and under his feet.

Jaadian remarked, "You are aware that I conversed with Howard Fair; he is so obsessed to escape the
squalor of his world that he acts with recklessness."

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 Green Magic



"The man Gerald McIntyre was his uncle," mused Misthemar. "McIntyre besought, we yielded; as
perhaps now we must yield to Howard Fair."

Jaadian uneasily opened his hand, shook off a spray of emerald fire. "Events press, both in and out. I
find myself unable to act in this regard."

"I likewise do not care to be the agent of tragedy."

A Meaning came fluttering up from below: "A disturbance among the spiral towers! A caterpillar of
glass and metal has come clanking; it has thrust electric eyes into the Portinone and broke open the Egg
of Innocence. Howard Fair is the fault."

Jaadian and Misthemar consulted each other with wry disinclination. "Very well, both of us will go;
such a duty needs two souls in support."

They impinged upon Earth and found Howard Fair in a wall booth at a cocktail bar. He looked up at the
two strangers and one of them asked, "May we join you?"