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

with the land-barons whom they regarded as pompous martinets, without style, grace or humor.

At Olanje in an eccentric old edifice known as Holrude House sat KoryphonтАЩs single organ of
government: the Mull, a council of thirteen notables. The MullтАЩs charter asserted control across Szintarre
and Uaia alike, but in practice it avoided any interest in Uaian affairs. The land-barons considered the
Mull an organ for the production of inconsequential sophistry; the Treaty Uldras were apathetic; the
Retent Uldras rejected even the theory of centralized authority; the Wind-runners were ignorant of the
MullтАЩs very existence.

The cosmopolitan population of Olanje generated for itself an almost hyperactive intellectualism. Social
activity was incessant; committees and societies existed to accommodate almost any special interest: a
yacht club; several artistsтАЩ associations; the Morphote-Watchers; the Szintarre Hussade Association; the
Library of Gaean Musical Archives; an association to sponsor the annual f├кte: Parilia; a college of the
dramatic arts; Dionys: that organization dedicated to hyperaesthesia. Other groups were philanthropic or
altruistic, such as the Ecological Foundation, which enjoined the importation of alien flora and fauna, no
matter how economically useful or aesthetically gratifying. The Redemptionist Alliance crusaded against
the Submission Treaties; they advocated dissolution of the Uaian domains and return of the lands to the
Treaty tribes. The Society for the Emancipation of the Erjin, or SEE, asserted that erjins were intelligent
beings and might not legally be enslaved. The SEE was possibly the most controversial organization of
Olanje, inasmuch as an increasing number of erjins were being imported from the Palga for domestic
service, farm labor, garbage pick-up and the like. Other less disputatious groups sponsored education and
employment for Uldras immigrant to Szintarre from Uaia. These Uldras, derived in about equal
proportion from Retent and Treaty tribes, tended to excoriate the land-barons. Often their grievances were
real; often they complained from sheer petulance. The Redemptionists sometimes brought Uldra
immigrants before the Mull, the better to prod that often discursive, airy, didactic and capricious group
into action. With practiced skill the Mull fended off such importunities or appointed a study commission,
which invariably reported the Treaty lands to be havens of peace compared to the Retent, where the
independent tribes conducted feuds, raids, assassinations, retaliations, outrages, massacres, atrocities and
ambushes. The Redemptionists declared such considerations to be irrelevant. The Treaty tribes, so they
pointed out, had been deprived of their ancestral lands through violence and deceit. The perpetuation of
such a condition was intolerable, nor could the passage of two hundred years legitimize an originally

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wrongful situation. Most residents of Szintarre tended generally to endorse the Redemptionist doctrine.


Chapter 1
In the foyer at the Olanje space port Schaine Madduc and her brother Kelse examined each other with
affectionate curiosity. Schaine had expected changes in Kelse; changes there were indeedтАФfive yearsтАЩ
worth and more. She had left him a bedridden cripple, pallid and desperate; he now seemed strong and
well, if a trifle gaunt. His artificial leg carried him with only the suggestion of a limp; he worked his left
arm as capably as he did his right, although he disdained simulated flesh and kept the metal hand encased
in a black glove. He had grown taller: this she had expected, but not the change in his face which had
lengthened and hardened and taken on an acerb refinement. His cheekbones had become prominent; his
jaw was a jut; his eyes were narrow, and he had acquired a habit of glancing sidewise in a wary or
suspicious or challenging squint: a signal, thought Schaine, of the true changes in Kelse: the alteration
from a trusting generous boy to this austere man who looked ten years older than his age.