"Jack Vance - Tschai 3 - The DirDir" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

"You still intend to travel space to this mythical planet of yours?" Anacho spoke in the voice
of one who reasons with an obstinate child.

"I want to return to Earth, certainly."

"Bah," muttered Anacho. "You are the victim of a hoax, or an obsession. Can you not cure
yourself? The project is easier to discuss than to effectuate. Spaceships are not wart-scissors,
to be picked up at any bazaar booth."

Reith said sadly, "I know this only too well."

Anacho spoke in an offhand manner: "I suggest that you apply at the Grand Sivishe Spaceyards.
Almost anything can be procured, if one has enough sequins."



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"I suspect that I don't," said Reith.

"Go to the Carabas. Sequins can be had by the bucketful."

Traz gave a short snort of derision. "Do you take us for maniacs?"

"Where is the Carabas?" asked Reith.

"The Carabas is in the Dirdir Hunting Preserve, at the north of Kislovan. Men with luck and
strong nerves sometimes prosper."

"Fools, gamblers and murderers, rather," muttered Traz.

Reith asked, "How do these men, whatever their nature, gain the sequins?"

Anacho's voice was flippant and airy. "By the usual method: they dig up nodes of chrysospine."

Reith rubbed his chin. "Is this the source of sequins? I thought that the Dirdir or some such
folk minted them."

"Your ignorance is that of another planet indeed!" declared Anacho.

The muscles around Reith's mouth gave a rueful twitch. "It could hardly be otherwise."

"The chrysospine," said Anacho, "grows only in the Black Zone, which is to say, the Carabas,
where uranium compounds occur in the soil. A full node yields two hundred and eighty-two sequins,
of one or another color. A purple sequin is worth a hundred clears; a scarlet is fifty, and down
through the emeralds, blues, sards and milks. Even Traz knows as much."

Traz looked at Anacho with a curled lip. "'Even Traz'?"