"Jack Vance - The Gray Prince" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

inhabit that wide band along the southern littoral known as the Alouan, while to the north the Wind-
runners sail their two- and three-masted wagons across the Palga plateau. Both are restless nomadic
peoples; in almost every other respect they differ. South across the Persimmon Sea the equatorial
continent Szintarre is inhabited by a cosmopolitan population of Outkers,*distinguished from both Uldras
and Wind-runners by several orders of sociological magnitude.

Considered indigenous to Koryphon are a pair of quasi-intelligent races: the erjins and the morphotes.
The Wind-runners domesticate and offer for sale erjins of a particularly massive and docile variety, or
perhaps they breed and train ordinary erjins to such characteristics. The Wind-runners are secretive in this
regard, inasmuch as the trade provides them wheels, bearings and rigging for their wind-wagons. Certain
Uldras of the Alouan capture, mount and ride wild erjins, controlling their ferocity with electric curbs.
Both domesticated and wild erjins have telepathic capacity by which they communicate with each other
and with a few Wind-runner adepts. Unrelated to the erjins are the morphotes, a malicious, perverse and
unpredictable race, esteemed only for their weird beauty. At Olanje on Szintarre the Outkers have gone so
far as to form morphote-viewing clubs, a recreation all the more titillating for the macabre habits of the
morphotes.

Two hundred years ago a group of off-planet freebooters dropped down upon Uaia, surprised and
captured a conclave of Uldra chieftains and compelled cession of title to certain tribal lands: the notorious
Submission Treaties. In such a fashion each member of the company acquired a vast tract ranging from
twenty thousand to sixty thousand square miles. In due course these tracts became the great тАШdomainsтАЩ of
the Alouan, upon which the тАШland-baronsтАЩ and their descendants lived large and expansive lives in
mansions built on a scale to match the holdings.

The tribes signatory to the Submission Treaties found their lives affected to no great extent: if anything,
improved. The new dams, ponds and canals provided dependable sources of water; intertribal warfare
was proscribed and the domain clinics provided at least a modicum of medical care. A few Uldras
attended domain schools and trained to become clerks, storekeepers and domestic servants; others took
jobs as ranch-hands.

In spite of such improvement, many Uldras resented the simple fact of inferior status. On a subconscious
and unacknowledged level but perhaps a source of equal exacerbation was the land-baronsтАЩ disinclination
for the Uldra females. A certain amount of rape or seduction, while resented, might have been accepted as


file:///C|/3278%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20...Jack%20Vance%20-%20The%20Gray%20Prince.html (3 of 132) [1/11/2005 11:52:19 PM]
 THEGRAYPRINCE

a sordid but inevitable adjunct to the conquest. In point of fact, while the Uldra men, with their tall
nervous physiques, gray skins dyed ultramarine blue and aquiline features, were in general personable,
the same could not be said for the women. The girls, squat and fat, with their scalps shaved bald against
the onslaught of vermin, lacked charm. As they matured, they retained their heavy hips and short legs, but
elongated their torsos, arms and faces. The typically long Uldra nose became a drooping icicle; the gray
skins became muddy; the hair, verminous or not, was allowed to grow into a heavy orange nimbus.
Toward these Uldra girls and women the Outker land-barons*maintained a scrupulously correct
indifference, which eventually, by a paradoxical reverse effect, came to be regarded by the Uldras as a
humiliation and an insult.

South across the Persimmon Sea lay the long narrow island Szintarre and its pleasant capital Olanje, a
fashionable resort for out-worlders. These folk, sophisticated, urbane, articulate, had little in common