"Wolfe, Gene - The Urth Of The New Sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

came in, you'd never find anything. It's too short."
"What happens if Sidero turns out the lights?"
"He won't. Once you wake them up they stay bright until
there's nobody to watch. Ah, I see something. Look there."
I looked, suddenly certain she had noticed a knife during
our hunt for the shaggy creature and was merely pretending
to have found it now. Only a bone hilt was visible.
"Go ahead. Nobody'll mind if you take it."
"That wasn't what I was thinking about," I told her.
It was a hunting knife, with a narrowed point and a
heavy saw-backed blade about two spans long. Just the
thing, I thought, for rough work.
"Get the sheath too. You can't carry it in your hand all
day."
That was of plain black leather, but it included a pocket
that had once held some small tool and recalled the
whetstone pocket on the manskin sheath of _Terminus Est_. I
was beginning to like the knife already, and I liked it more
when I saw that.
"Put it on your belt."
I did as I was told, positioning it on the left where it
balanced the weight of my pistol. "I would have expected
better stowage on a big vessel like this."
Gunnie shrugged. "This isn't really cargo. Just odds and
ends. Do you know how the ship's built?"
"I haven't the least idea."
She laughed at that. "Neither does anyone else, I suppose.
We have ideas we pass along to each other, but
eventually we usually find out they're wrong. Partly wrong,
anyway."
"I would have thought you'd know your ship."
"She's too big, and there are too many places where they
never take us, and we can't find for ourselves, or get into.
But she's got seven sides; that's so she'll carry more sail,
you follow me?"
"I understand."
"Some of the decks--three, I think--have deep bays.
That's where the main cargo is. They leave the other four
with wedge-shaped spaces. Some's used for odds and ends,
like this bay. Some's cabins and crew's quarters and what
not. But speaking of quarters, we'd better get back."
She had led me to another ladder, another platform. I
said, "I imagined somehow that we would go through a
secret panel, or perhaps only find that as we walked these
odds and ends, as you call them, became a garden."
Gunnie shook her head, then grinned. "I see you've seen
a bit of her already. You're a poet too, aren't you? And a
good liar, I bet."
"I was the Autarch of Urth; that required a little lying, if
you like. We called it diplomacy."