"Jack Vance - The Demon Princes - complete" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

Q: So then they desist?

A: Usually.

Q: And if not?
A: I pitch them into the sea.

Smade was a reticent man. His origins and early life were known
only to himself. In the year 1479 he acquired a cargo of fine timber,
which, for a whole set of obscure reasons, he took to a small stony
world in the middle Beyond. And there, with the help of ten in-
dentured artisans and as many slaves, he built Smade's Tavern.

The site was a long narrow shelf of heath between the Smade
Mountains and Sinade Ocean, precisely on the planet's equator. He
built to a plan as old as construction itself, using stone for the walls,
timber beams and plates of schist for the roof. Completed, the tav-
ern clung to the landscape, as integral as an outcrop of rock: a long
two-storied structure with a high gable, a double row of windows
in front and rear, chimneys at either end venting smoke from fires
of fossil moss. At the rear stood a group of cypress trees, their shape
and foliage completely appropriate to the landscape.

Smade introduced other new features into the ecology: in a
sheltered valley behind the tavern he planted fodder and garden
truck; in another he kept a small herd of cattle and a flock of poul-
try. All did moderately well, but showed no disposition to overrun
the planet.

Smade's dominion extended as far as he cared to claimтАФthere
was no other habitation on the planetтАФbut he chose to assert con-
trol only over an area of perhaps three acres, within the bounds of
a whitewashed stone fence. From occurrences beyond the fence
Smade held aloof, unless he had reason to consider his own interests
threatenedтАФa contingency which had never arisen.

Smade's Planet was the single companion of Smade's Star, an

THE STAR KING

undistinguished white dwarf in a relatively empty region of space.
The native flora was sparse: lichen, moss, primitive vines and pal-
odendron, pelagic algae which tinctured the sea black. The fauna
was even simpler: white worms in the seabottom muck; a few ge-
latinous creatures which gathered and ingested the black algae in a
ludicrously inept fashion; an assortment of simple protozoa.
Smade's alterations of the planet's ecology could hardly, therefore,
be considered detrimental.