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

Farr shrugged and walked into the next room.

"On the gray disk, Farr SainhтАФpalms forward, eyes wide."

He stood rigid as feeler-planes brushed down his body. In a glass dome
a three-dimensional simulacrum of himself six inches high took form. Farr
inspected it sourly.

"Thank you," said the operative. "Clothes and whatever personal effects
you may need will be issued in the next room."

Farr dressed in visitor's uniform: white soft trousers, a gray and green
striped smock, a loose dark-green velvet beret that fell low over his ear.
"Now may I go?"
 The attendant looked into a slot beside him. Farr could see a flicker of
bright characters. "You are Farr Sainh the research botanist." It was as if
he had said, "You are Farr, the admitted criminal."

"I'm Farr."

"There are several formalities awaiting you."

The formalities required three hours. Farr was once more given to the
Szecr, who examined him carefully.

He was finally allowed his freedom. A young man in the yellow and
green stripes of the Szecr escorted him to a gondola floating in the lagoon,
a long slender craft grown from a single pod. Farr gingerly took a seat and
was sculled across to the city of Jhespiano.

It was his first experience in an Iszic city, and it was far richer than his
mental picture. The houses grew at irregular intervals along the avenues
and canalsтАФheavy gnarled trunks, supporting first the lower pods, then
masses of broad leaves, half-submerging the upper pod-banks. Something
stirred in Farr's memoryтАФan associationтАж Yeasts or mycetozoa under the
microscope. Lamproderma violaceum? Dictydium cancellatum? There
was the same proliferation of branches. The pods might have been
magnified sporangia. There was the same arched well-engineered
symmetry, the peculiar complex colors: dark blue overlaid with glistening
gray down, burnt orange with a scarlet luster, scarlet with a purple
over-glow, sooty green, white highlighted with pink, subtle browns and
near-blacks. The avenues below drifted with the Iszic population, a quiet
pale people, secure in the stratifications of their guilds and castes.

The gondola glided to the landing. A Szecr in a yellow beret with green
tassels was waitingтАФapparently a man of importance. There was no
formal introduction; the Szecr discussed Farr quietly between themselves.

Farr saw no reason to wait, and started up the avenue toward one of