"Vance, Jack - Alastor Cluster 02 - Alastor 2262-Trullion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)
Glinnes' 'astonishment increased. What had prompted these young people to battle so fanatically for a cause obviously lost? What, indeed, had impelled them to become Ugly Folk? Why had they defiled and defouled, destroyed and corrupted? Glinnes attempted to question one of the prisoners who pretended not to understand his dialect. Shortly thereafter Glumes was ordered back aloft with his ship.
Glinnes returned to base. Picking up his mail, he found a letter from Shira containing tragic news. Jut Hulden had gone out to hunt merling once too often; they had laid a cunning trap for him. Before Shira could come to his aid, Jut had been dragged into Farwan Water. The news affected Glinnes with a rather irrational astonishment. He found it hard to imagine change in the timeless fens, especially change so profound.
Shira was now Squire of Rabendary. Glumes wondered what other changes might be in store. Probably none-Shira had no taste for innovation. He would bring in a wife and breed a family; so much at least could be expected-if not sooner, then later. Glinnes speculated as to who might marry bulky balding Shira with the red cheeks and lumpy nose. Even as a hussade player, Shira had found difficulty enticing girls into the shadows, for while Shira considered himself bluff, friendly and affable, others thought him coarse, lewd and boisterous.
Glinnes began to muse about his boyhood. He recalled the hazy mornings, the festive evenings, the starwatcbings. He recalled his good friends and their quaint habits; he remembered the look of Rabendary Forest-the menas looming over russet pomanders silver-green birches, dark-green prick-lenuts. He thought of the shimmer that hung above the water and softened the outline of far shores; he thought of the ramshackle old family home, and discovered himself to be profoundly homesick.
Two months later, at the end of ten years service, he resigned his commission and returned to Trulllion.
Chapter 4
* * *
Glinnes had sent a letter announcing his arrival, but when he debarked at Port Maheul in Staveny Prefecture, none of his family was on hand to greet him, which he thought strange.
He loaded his baggage onto the ferry and took a seat on the top deck, to watch the scenery go by. How easy and gay were the country folk in their parays of dull scarlet, blue, ocher! Glinnes semi-military garments-black jacket, beige breeches tucked into black ankleboots felt stiff and constricted. He'd probably never wear them again!
The boat presently slid into the dock at Welgen. A delectable odor wafted past Glinnes nose, which he traced to a nearby fried-fish booth. Glinnes went ashore and bought a packet of steamed reed-pods and a length of barbecued eel. He looked about for Shira or Glay or Marucha, though he hardly expected to find them here. A group of off-worlders attracted his attention: three young men, wearing what seemed to be a uniform-neat gray one-piece garments belted at the waist, highly polished tight black shoes-and three young women, in rather austere gowns of durable white duck. Both men and women wore their hair cropped short, in not-unbecoming style, and wore small medallions on their left shoulders. They passed close to Glinnes and he realized that they were not off-worlders after all, but Trills . . . Students at a doctrinaire academy? Members of a religious order? Either case was possible, for they carried books, calculators, and seemed to be engaged in earnest discussion. Glumes gave the girls a second appraisal. There was, he thought, something unappealing about them, which at first he could not define. The ordinary Trill girl dressed herself in almost anything at hand, without over-anxiety that it might be rumpled or threadbare or soiled, and then made herself gay with flow-prs These eirls looked not only clean, but fastidious as well.
Too clean, too fastidious . . . Glinnes shrugged and returned to the ferry.
The ferry moved on into the heart of the fens, along waterways dank with the scent of still water, decaying reedstalks, and occasionally a hint of a rich fetor, suggesting the presence of merrling. Ripil Broad appeared ahead, and a cluster of shacks that was Saurkash, the end of the line for Glinnes; here the ferry veered north for the villages along Great Vole Island. Glinnes unloaded his cases onto the dock, and for a moment stood looking around the village. The most prominent feature was the hussade field and its dilapidated old bleachers, once the home-field of the Saurkash Serpents. Almost adjacent was The Magic Tench, the most pleasant of Saurkash's three taverns. He walked down the dock to the office where ten years before Milo Harrad had rented boats and operated a water-taxi.
Harrad was nowhere to be seen. A young man whom Glinnes did not know sat dozing in the shade.
"Good day, friend," said Glinnes, and the young man, awaking, turned toward Glinnes a look of mild reproach. "Can you take me out to Rabendary Island?" "Whenever you like." The young man looked Glinnes slowly up and down and lurched to his feet "You'd be Glinnes Hulden, unless I'm mistaken." "Quite right. But I don't remember you." "You'd have no reason to do so. I'm old Harrad's nephew from Voulash. They call me Young Harrad, and I expect that's what I'll be the rest of my life. I mind when you played for the Serpents."
"That's some time ago. You've got an accurate memory." "Not all that good. The Huldens have always been hussade types. Old Harrad talked much of Jut, the best rover Saurkash ever produced, or so said old Milo. Shira was a solid guard, right enough, but slow in the jumps. I doubt I ever saw him make a clean swing." "That's a fair judgment." Glinnes looked along the waterway. "I expected him here to meet me, or my brother G;ay. Evidently they had better things to do."
Young Harrad glanced at him sidewise, then shrugged and brought one of his neat green and white skiffs to the dock. Glinnes loaded his cases aboard and they set off eastward along Mellish Water.
Young Harrad cleared his throat. "You expected Shira to meet you?" "I did indeed." "You didn't hear about Shira then?" "What happened to him?" "He disappeared." "Disappeared?" Glinnes looked around with a slack jaw. "Where?" "No one knows. To the merling's dinner-table, likely enough. That's where most folk disappear." "Unless they go off to visit friends."*
"For two months? Shira was a great horn, so I've been told, but two months on cauch would be quite extraordinary." Glinnes gave a despondent grunt and turned away, no longer in the mood for conversation. Jut gone, Shira gone-his homecoming could only be a melancholy occasion. The scenery, ever more familiar, ever more rich with memories, now only served to increase his gloom. Islands he knew well slid by on each side: Jurzy Island, where the Jurzy Lightning-bolts, his first team, had practiced; Calceon Island, where lovely Loel Issam had resisted his most urgent blandishments. Later she became sheirl from the Caspar Trip-tanes, and finally, after her shaming, had wed Lord Clois from Graven Table, north of the fens . . . Memories thronged his mind; he wondered why he had ever departed the fens. His ten years in the Whelm already seemed no more than a dream.
The boat moved out upon Seaward Broad. To the south, at the end of a mile's perspective, stood Near Island, and beyond, somewhat wider and higher, Middle Island, and yet beyond, still wider, still higher, Far Island: three silhouettes obscured by water-haze in three distinct degrees, Far Island showing only slightly more substance than the sky at the southern horizon.
The boat slid into narrow Athenry Water, with hushberry trees leaning together to form an arch over the still, dark water. Here the scent of merling was noticeable. Harrad and Glinnes both watched for water swirls. For reasons known j best to themselves, merlings gathered in Athenry Water-perhaps for the hushberries, which were poisonous to men, perhaps for the shade, perhaps for the savor of hushberry roots in the water. The surface lay placid and cool; if merlings
* going off to visit friends: a euphemism for cauch-crazy lovers going off to camp in the wilds.
were nearby, they kept to their burrows. The boat passed out upon Fleharish Broad. On Five Islands, to the south, Tham-mas Lord Gensifer maintained his ancient manse. Not far away a sailboat rode high across the Broad on hydrofoils; at the tiller sat Lord Gensifer himself: a hearty round-faced man ten years older than Glinnes, burly of shoulder and chest if rather thin in the legs. He tacked smartly and came foaming, up on a reach beside Harrad's boat, then luffed his sail. The boat dropped from its foils and rode flat in the water. "If I'm not mistaken it's young Glinnes Hulden, back from starfaring!" Lord Gensifer called out. "Welcome back to the fens!"
Glinnes and Harrad both rose to their feet and performed the salute due a lord of Gensifer's quality. "Thank you," said Glinnes. "I'm glad to be back, no doubt about that." "There's no place like the fens! And what are your plans for the old place?" Glinnes was puzzled. "Plans? None in particular . . . Should I have plans?" "I would presume so. After all, you're now Squire of Ra-bendary." Glinnes squinted across the water, off toward Rabendary Island. "I suppose I am, for a fact, if Shiraa is truly dead. I'm older than Glay by an hour."
"And a good job too, if you want my opinion . . . Ha, hmm. You'll see for yourself, no doubt." Lord Gensifer drew in the sheet. "What about hussade? Are you for the new club? We'd certainly like a Hulden on the team." "I don't know anything about it, Lord Gensifer. I'm so bewildered by the turn of affairs I can't give any sensible answer."
"In due course, in due course." Lord Gensifer sheeted home the sail; the hull, surging forward, rose on its foils and skimmed across Fleharish Broad at great speed. "There's sport for you," said Young Harrad enviously. "He had that contraption brought out from Illucante by Inter-world. Think of the ozols it cost him!" "It looks dangerous," said Glumes. "If it goes over, he and the merlings are out there alone." "Lord Gensifer is a daredevil sort of chap, said Harrad. "Still, they say the craft is safe enough. It can't sink, first of all, even if it did go over. He could always ride the hull until someone picked him up."
They continued across Fleharish Broad and out into Hfish Water, with the Prefecture Free Commons on their left an island of five hundred acres reserved for the use of casual wanderers, Trevanyi, Wrye, lovers "visiting friends." The boat entered Ambaal Broad, and there ahead-the dear outline of Rabendary Island: home. Glinnes blinked at the moisture that came to his eyes. A sad homecoming, in truth. Ambal Island looked its loveliest. Looking toward the old manor, Glinnes thought to perceive a wisp of smoke rising from the chimneys. A startling theory came to him, which would account for Lord Gensifer's sniff. Had Glay taken up residence in the manor? Lord Gensifer would consider such an action ridiculous and discreditable-a vulgarian trying to ape his betters.
The boat pulled up to Rabendary dock; Glinnes unloaded his luggage, paid off Young Harrad. He stared toward the house. Had it always lurched and sagged? Had the weeds always grown so rank? There was a condition of comfortable shabbiness which the Trills considered endearing, but the old house had gone far past this state. As he mounted the steps to the verandah, they groaned and sagged under his weight.
Flecks of color caught his eye, across the field near Rabendary Forest. Glinnes squinted and focused his gaze. Three tents: red, black, dull orange. Trevanyi tents. Glinnes shook his head in angry disparagement. He had not returned too soon. He called out, "Hallo the house! Who's here but me?" In the doorway appeared the tall figure of his mother. She looked at him incredulously, then ran forward a few steps. "Glinnes! How strange to see you!" Glinnes hugged and kissed her, ignoring the overtones of the remark.
"Yes I'm back, and it feels strange to me too. Where is Glay?" "He's off with one of his comrades. But how well you look! You've grown into a very fine man!" "You haven't changed by so much as a twitch; you're still my beautiful mother." "Oh, Glinnes, such flattery, I feel old as the hills and I look it too, I'm sure ... I suppose you've heard the sad news?" "About Shira? Yes. It grieves me terribly. Doesn't anyone know what happened?" "Nothing is known," said Marucha rather primly. "But sit down, Glinnes; take off those fine boots and rest your feet. Would you care for apple wine?"
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