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

Smade himself was tall, broad, and stout, with bone-white skin
and jet-black hair. His antecedents, as has been mentioned, were
vague, and he never had been heard to reminisce; the tavern, how-
ever, was managed with the utmost decorum. The three wives lived
in harmony, the children were handsome and well-mannered,
Smade himself was unfailingly polite. His rates were high, but his
hospitality was generous, and he made no difficulties about collect-
ing his bill. A sign hung above the bar: "Eat and drink without
stint. He who can and does pay is a customer. He who cannot and
does not pay is a guest of the establishment."'

Smade's patrons were diverse: explorers, locators, Jarnell tech-
nicians, private agents in search of lost men or stolen treasure, more
rarely an IPCC representativeтАФor "weasel," in the argot of the
Beyond. Others were folk more dire, and these were of as many
sorts as there were crimes to be named. Making a virtue of neces-
sity, Smade presented the same face to all.

To Smade's Tavern in the July of 1524 came Kirth Gersen,
representing himself as a locater. His boat was the standard model
leased by the estate houses within the Oikumene, a thirty-foot cyl-
inder equipped with no more than bare necessities: in the bow the
monitor-autopilot duplex, a star-finder, chronometer, macroscope,
and manual controls; midships the living quarters with air machine,
organic reconverter, information bank, and storage; aft the energy
block, the Jarnell intersplit, and further storage. The boat was as
scarred and dented as any; Gersen's personal disguise was no more
than well-worn clothes and natural taciturnity. Smade accepted him
on his own terms.

"Will you stay awhile, Mr. Gersen?"

"Two or three days, perhaps. I have things to think over."

Smade nodded in profound understanding. "We're slack just
now; just you and the Star King. You'll find all the quiet you need."

"I'll be pleased for that," said Gersen, which was quite true; his

THE DEMON PRINCES

Just-completed affairs had left him with a set of unresolved qualms.
He turned awav, then halted and looked back as Smade's words
penetrated his consciousness. "There's a Star King here, at the tav-

i="

"He has presented himself so."

"I've never seen a Star King. Not that I know of."