"Jack Vance - Marune v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

Dinster shook his head. "This lad's no vagabond. Look at his hands."

Mergan reluctantly followed Dinster's suggestion. The hands were strong and
well kept and showed evidence neither of toil nor submersion in dye. The
man's features were firm and even; the poise of his head suggested status.
Mergan, who preferred to ignore the circumstances of his own birth, felt an
uncomfortable tingle of deference and corresponding resentment. Again he
barked at the young man: "Who are you? What is your name?"

"I don't know." The voice was slow and labored, and colored with an accent
Mergan failed to recognize.

"Where is your home?"

"I don't know."

Mergan became unreasonably sarcastic. "Do you know anything?"

Dinster ventured an opinion. "Looks to me, sir, as if he came aboard one of
yesterday's ships."

Mergan asked the young man: "What ship did you arrive on? Do you have
friends here?"

The young man fixed him with a brooding dark-gray gaze, and Mergan became
uncomfortable. He turned to Dinster. "Does he carry papers? Or money?"

Dinster muttered to the young man: "Excuse me, sir." Gingerly he groped
through the pockets of the rumpled gray suit. "I can't find anything here,
sir."

"What about ticket stubs, or vouchers, or tokens?"

"Nothing at all, sir."

"It's what they call amnesia," said Mergan. He picked up a pamphlet and
glanced down a list: "Six ships in, yesterday. He might have arrived on any
of them." Mergan touched a button. A voice said: "Prosidine, arrival gate."

Mergan described the amnesiac. "Do you know anything about him? He arrived
sometime yesterday."

"Yesterday was more than busy; I didn't take time to notice anything."

"Make inquiries of your people and notify me."

Mergan thought a moment, then called the Carfaunge hospital. He was
connected to the Director of Admissions, who listened patiently enough, but
made no constructive proposals. "We have no facilities here for such cases.
He has no money, you say? Definitely not, then."