"Vance, Jack - Planet of Adventure 04 - The Pnume" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

Planet of Adventure










TABLE Of CONTENTS

Book One CITY OF THE CHASCH
Book Two SERVANTS OF THE WANKH
Book Three THE DIRDIR
Book Four THE PNUME














THE PHUME




CHAPTER ONE
IN THE WAREHOUSE at the edge of the Sivishe salt flats, Aila Woudiver sat
perched on a stool. A chain connected the iron collar around his neck to a high
cable; he could walk from his table to the closet against the wall where he
slept, the chain sliding behind him.
Aila Woudiver was a prisoner on his own premises, insult added to injury,
which by all accounts should have provoked him to spasms of tooth-chattering
fury. But he sat placidly on the stool, great buttocks sagging to either side
like saddlebags, wearing an absurd smile of saintly forbearance.
Beside the spaceship which occupied the greater part of the warehouse Adam
Reith stood watching. Woudiver's abnegation was more unsettling than rage. Reith
hoped that whatever schemes Woudiver was hatching would not mature too quickly.
The spaceship was nearly operative; in a week, more or less, Reith hoped to
depart old Tschai.