"Robert F. Young - Prisoners of Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

subject alsoтАФ"
The traditional snowjob, Larry thought. To how many hungry-eyed tourists had he already delivered
it? Tourists with blue lakes in their eyes and with little office cubicles crammed into the backs of their
minds. If I were a tourist I'll bet it would sound terrific to me, too, he thought. I'll bet when he came to the
part about the rent it wouldn't even disillusion me, that even then I'd be too blind to see the credit signs in
his baby-blue eyes.
But tourists didn't mind being duped. They came to the Misseros d'n Gaedo region to fish and to
hunt, to relax in an uncomplicated milieu; they didn't come to look for their wives. They'd had sense
enough to marry emotionally stable women. Stolid women, unimaginative womenтАФ
"There is, of course," the chief said, "a small fee which we arc required to ask for our hospitality.
Probably you are familiar with the ruling of the Altair council in this respect. Having to ask payment for
services which, in happier circumstances, I would gladly render free, is a source of extreme humiliation to
me, but I have no choice."
Larry already had his credit book in his hand. "I don't know exactly how long I'll be here," he said.
"Perhaps a weekтАФ"
The chief's blue eyes were guileless. "Our weekly rate is fifty credits," he said. "Payable in advance."
The robber! Larry thought, tearing out five crisp tens. The first village had only asked thirty-five, and
that had been exorbitant enough. He hadn't had to pay then, though. One glance around had told him
Karen wasn't there. Somehow, after years of weary searching and finding, you knew instinctively where
to look; you sensed just the kind of mise en scene that would appeal to her. You could tell by the
expressions on the people's faces, by the architecture of the houses, by the contour of the land. One
glance had been enough and he had reentered the flier and lifted swiftly above the disappointed natives,
and presently he had found this village. And this village looked right, this village could be the oneтАФ
And if it was, fifty credits was certainly cheap enough, he rationalized. Finding Karen was worth
more than fifty credits any day. He handed the five tens to the chief and returned to the flier for his kit. By
the time he returned to the beach the chief had already selected a "companion" for him and was walking
back up the village street. The crowd, its duty done, was listlessly dispersing.
Larry's "companion" was a buxom doll of a girl with a rosebud mouth, big blue eyes, and frizzly
straw-colored hair. She took his kit and led the way up the street. There was a shed-like structure that
resembled a primitive warehouse standing on the beach. But Larry knew it wasn't a warehouse, and
when they passed it he identified the muffled sound that emanated from its interior as the smooth hum of a
modern generator. He identified the vine-like cables that overhung the street for what they really were
tooтАФelectric wires.
Multi-colored honeysuckle wound riotously around the stilts of the houses, but looking closely he
saw the glint, here and there, of a copper pipe, and he knew that primitive though the houses might be in
outward respects they at least had running water and other modern conveniences.
They also contained some form of television receivers. The animal shapes of the antennae on their
rooftops might convince the ordinary tourist that all he was seeing was a kind of cultural religious symbol,
but Larry wasn't an ordinary tourist. He wondered cynically what ancient vintage of film entertainment the
Interstellar Mass Media Board had alloted Altair 12. Then he saw a group of native children playing in
the nearby forest and he realized the nature of the game they were engaged in. The hoary "bang-bang" of
the pre-space "oaters" resounded incongruously among the idyllic trees as baby faced cowboys loped
ecstatically about on imaginary steeds. Hop-along Cassidy rides again, Larry thought, and marveled at his
own apostasy.
The trouble with him was that he had seen too many converted cultures. Searching for Karen on so
many out-of-the-way planets had made him hypercritical, in spite of himself, of the repetitious puppet
dances of inferior civilizations. And when the dance was deliberately concealed behind simple,
non-technological exteriors in order to lure vacationists from Earth and the other technologically
advanced planets, there was something snide about it, something obscene. . . .
His "companion" had halted before one of the houses and was regarding him with mundane