"Jack vance - Tschai 2 - Servants of the Wankh" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

like Pnume: a startling process itself, if what I hear is correct."
Traz, no less proud than the Dirdirman, became taut. "How do you speak with
such assurance? Have you observed the process? Have you seen a Phung with
others, or guarding a cub?" He lowered his lip in a sneer. "No! They go singly,
too mad to breed!"
Anacho made a finger-fluttering gesture of fastidious didacticism. "Rarely
are Pnume seen in groups; rarely do we see a Pnume alone, for that matter. Yet
they flourish in their peculiar fashion. Brash generalizations are suspect. The
truth is that after many long years on Tschai we still know little of either
Phung or Pnume."
Traz gave an inarticulate growl, too wise not to concede the conviction of


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Anacho's logic, too proud to abandon abjectly his point of view. And Anacho, in
his turn, made no attempt to push a superficial advantage home. In time, thought
Reith, the two might even learn to respect each other.
In the morning Anacho again tinkered with the engine, while the others
shivered in the cold airs seeping down from the north. Traz gloomily predicted
rain, and presently a high overcast began to form, and fog eased over the tops
of the hills to the north.
Anacho finally threw down the tools in boredom and disgust. "I have done what
I can. The raft will fly, but not far."
"How far, in your opinion?" asked Reith, aware that Ylin-Ylan had turned to
listen. "To Cath?"
Anacho flapped up his hands, fluttering his fingers in an unknowable Dirdir
gesticulation. "To Cath, by your projected route: impossible. The engine is
falling to dust."
Ylin-Ylan looked away, studied her clenched hands.
"Flying south, we might reach Coad on the Dawn Zher," Anacho went on, "and
there take passage across the Draschade. Such a route is longer and slower-but
conceivably we will arrive in Cath."
"It seems that we have no choice," said Reith.



CHAPTER TWO
FOR A PERIOD they followed the southward course of the vast Nabiga River,
traveling only a few feet above the surface, where the repulsion plates suffered
the least strain. The Nabiga swept off to the west, demarcating the Dead Steppe
from the Aman Steppe, and the raft continued south across an inhospitable region
of dim forests, bogs, and morasses; and a day later returned to the steppe. On
one occasion they saw a caravan in the distance: a line of high-wheeled carts
and trundling house-wagons; another time they came upon a band of nomads wearing
red feather fetishes on their shoulders, who bounded frantically across the
steppe to intercept them, and were only gradually outdistanced.
Late in the afternoon they painfully climbed above a huddle of brown and
black hills. The raft jerked and yawed; the black case emitted ominous rasping