"Jack Vance - Telek" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

 "Peculiar?" Geskamp gathered his bushy eyebrows into arches of vast scorn. "Madmen. For a
whimтАФa town erased, men and women sent forth homeless." He waved his hand around the stadium.
"Two hundred million crowns spent to gratify irresponsible popinjays whose onlyтАФ"
A droll voice above them said, "I hear myself bespoken."

The two men jerked around. A man stood in the air ten feet above them. His face was mercurial and
lighthearted; a green cap hung waggishly to the side of his head; dark hair hung below, almost to his
shoulders. He wore a flaring red cape, tight green trousers, black velvet shoes. "You speak in anger, with
little real consideration. We are your benefactors; where would you be without us?"
"Living normal lives," growled Geskamp.
The Telek was disposed to facetiousness. "Who is to say that yours is a normal life? In any event, our
whim is your employment; we formulate our idle dreams, you and your men enrich yourselves fulfilling
them, and we're both the better for it."
"Somehow the money always ends up back with the Teleks. A mystery."
"No, no mystery whatever. It is the exercise of economic law. In any event, we procure the funds,
and we would be fools to hoard. In our spending you find occupation."
"We would not be idle otherwise."
"Perhaps not. Perhaps . . . well, look." He pointed across the stadium to the shadows on the far wall.
"Perhaps there is your bent." And as they watched, their shadows became active. Shorn's shadow bent
forward, Geskamp's shadow drew back, aimed and delivered a mighty kick, then turned, bent, and
Shorn's shadow kicked.
The Telek cast no shadow.
Geskamp snorted, Shorn smiled grimly. They looked back overhead, but the Telek had moved high
and was drifting south.
"Offensive creature," said Geskamp. "A law should be passed confiscating their every farthing."
Shorn shook his head. "They'd have it all back by nightfall. That's not the answer." He hesitated, as if
about to add something further.
Geskamp, already irked by the Telek, did not take the contradiction kindly. Shorn, an architectural
draughtsman, was his subordinate. "I suppose you know the answer?"
"I know several answers. One of them is that they should all be killed."
Geskamp's irritation had never carried him quite so far. Shorn was a strange, unpredictable fellow.
"Rather bloodthirsty," he said heavily.
Shorn shrugged. "It might be best in the long run."
Geskamp's eyebrows lowered into a straight bar of gold-gray bristle across his face. "The idea is
impractical. The creatures are hard to kill."
Shorn laughed. "It's more than impracticalтАФit's dangerous. If you recall the death of Vernisaw
KnerwigтАФ"
Vemisaw Knerwig had been punctured by a pellet from a high-power rifle, fired from a window. The
murderer, a wild-eyed stripling, was apprehended. But the jail had not been tight enough to keep him. He
disappeared. For months misfortune dogged the town. Poison appeared in the water supply. A dozen
fires roared up one night. The roof of the town school collapsed. And one afternoon a great meteor
struck down from space and obliterated the central square.
"Killing Teleks is dangerous work," said Geskamp. "It's not a realistic thought. After all," he said
hurriedly, "they're men and women like ourselves; nothing illegal has ever been proved."
Shorn's eyes glittered. "Illegality? When they dam the whole stream of human development?"
Geskamp frowned. "I'd hardly sayтАФ"
"The signs are clear enough when a person pulls his head up out of the sand."
The conversation had got out of hand; Geskamp had been left behind. Waste and excess he
admitted, but there were so few Teleks, so many ordinary people; how could they be dangerous? It was
strange for an architect. He looked sidewise in cautious calculation.