"Jack Vance - The Houses of Iszm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

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The Houses of Iszm by Jack
Vance
I
IT WAS assumed as a matter of course that visitors came to Iszm with
a single purpose: to steal a female house. Cosmographers, students,
babes-in-arms, notorious scoundrels: the Iszic cynically applied the same
formula to allтАФmicroscopic inspection of mind and body and detailed
surveillance.

Only the fact that they turned up so many house-thieves justified the
procedure.

From a distance, it seemed simple enough to steal a house. A seed no
larger than a grain of barley could be sewn into a strap; a seedling could
be woven into the pattern of a shawl; a young shoot could be taped to a
rocket-missile and launched into space. There were a thousand fool-proof
ways to steal an Iszic house; all had been tried, and the unsuccessful
thieves had been conducted to the Mad House, their Iszic escorts
courteous to the last. As realists, the Iszic knew that some dayтАФa year, a
hundred years, a thousand yearsтАФthe monopoly would be broken. As
fanatically secretive controllers of the monopoly they intended to postpone
this day as long as possible.

Aile Fair was a tall, gaunt man in his thirties, with a droll, corded face,
big hands and feet. His skin, eyes and hair were a dust-colored
monochrome. More important to the Iszic, he was a botanist, hence an
automatic object of the utmost suspicion.

Arriving at Jhespiano atoll aboard the Red Ball Packet Eubert Honore,
he encountered suspicion remarkable even in Iszm. Two of the Szecr, the
elite police, met him at the exit hatch, escorted him down the gangway
like a prisoner, and ushered him into a peculiar one-way passage. Flexible
spines grew from the walls in the direction of passage. A man could enter
the hall, but could not change his mind and return. The end of the passage
was closed by a sheet of clear glass and at this point Farr could move
neither forward nor back.

An Iszic wearing bands of wine-red and gray stepped forward and
examined him through the glass. Farr felt like a specimen in a case. The
Iszic grudgingly slid the panel back and led Farr into a small private room.
With the Szecr standing at his back, Farr turned over his debarkation slip,
his health certificate, his bond of good character, his formal entry