"Gene Wolfe - Endangered Species" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

his own.

Now Severian was the Autarch, Severian was the law, and
murderers died under the law's hand.

Someone was pounding at the hatch. He spat again, this
time into the slop jar, and shouted in the direction of the
vent. It let in enough light for him to see the impression
Syntyche had left in her bunk as she lay face to the bulkhead,
feigning sleep. He smoothed it with his hands.

For a moment he groped for his clothes and his knife,
but the knife was gone. He chuckled and rocked back on his
own narrow bunk, pushing both legs into his trousers to-
gether.

More pounding; the boat rocked beneath him as the
stranger searched for another way into the cabin. He spat a
third time, and from habit reached up to draw the bolt that
was back already. "Hatch sticks! Come on down, you cataniite,
I'm not coming up."

The stranger lifted it and clambered down the steep steps.
" 'Ware deck beams."

He stooped as he turned about, and he was tall enough
that he had to. "You're Captain Eata?"

"Sit on the other bunk. Nobody's using it any more. What
do you want?"

"But you are Eata?"

"We'll talk abo"r that later, maybe. After you tell me what
you want."
"A guide."
Eata was feeling the cut on his head and did not answer.
"I was told that you are an intelligent man."
"Not by a friend."

"I need a man with a boat to take me down Gyoll. To tell
me what I need to know concerning the ruins. They said you
knew it as well as any man alive."

"An asimi," Eata said. "One asimi for each day. And you'll

have to help me handle her-my deckhand and I had a little
argument last night."

"Shall we say six orichalks? It should only take a day, and