"Vance, Jack - Gaean Reach - Demon Princes 01 - The Star Kings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

be considered detrimental.

Smade himself was tall, broad, and stout, with bone-white skin
and jet-black hair. His antecedents, as has been mentioned, were
vague, and he never had been heard to reminisce; the tavern, how-
ever, was managed with the utmost decorum. The three wives lived
in harmony, the children were handsome and well-mannered,
Smade himself was unfailingly polite. His rates were high, but his
hospitality was generous, and he made no difficulties about collect-
ing his bill. A sign hung above the bar: "Eat and drink without
stint. He who can and does pay is a customer. He who cannot and
does not pay is a guest of the establishment."'

Smade's patrons were diverse: explorers, locators, Jarnell tech-
nicians, private agents in search of lost men or stolen treasure, more
rarely an IPCC representative-or "weasel," in the argot of the
Beyond. Others were folk more dire, and these were of as many
sorts as there were crimes to be named. Making a virtue of neces-
sity, Smade presented the same face to all.

To Smade's Tavern in the July of 1524 came Kirth Gersen,
representing himself as a locater. His boat was the standard model
leased by the estate houses within the Oikumene, a thirty-foot cyl-
inder equipped with no more than bare necessities: in the bow the
monitor-autopilot duplex, a star-finder, chronometer, macroscope,
and manual controls; midships the living quarters with air machine,
organic reconverter, information bank, and storage; aft the energy
block, the Jarnell intersplit, and further storage. The boat was as
scarred and dented as any; Gersen's personal disguise was no more
than well-worn clothes and natural taciturnity. Smade accepted him
on his own terms.

"Will you stay awhile, Mr. Gersen?"

"Two or three days, perhaps. I have things to think over."

Smade nodded in profound understanding. "We're slack just
now; just you and the Star King. You'll find all the quiet you need."

"I'll be pleased for that," said Gersen, which was quite true; his

THE DEMON PRINCES

Just-completed affairs had left him with a set of unresolved qualms.
He turned awav, then halted and looked back as Smade's words
penetrated his consciousness. "There's a Star King here, at the tav-

i="

"He has presented himself so."