"Robert F. Young - Tents of Kedar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

waterfront. Two months before she showed up in Eastcliff's office, she had abruptly forsaken her chosen
profession, taken a speed course in secretarial work, provided herself with a fictitious and purposely
ambiguous background, and registered with Port D'argent's only employment agency. It was as though
she had known in advance that the job she presently obtained as Eastcliff's private secretary would be
available.
Half numb from these blows, Eastcliff received yet another in the form of a bank statement. He had
opened a $100,000 checking account in Anastasia's name: the statement showed she had written exactly
one check for exactly that amount, converting it to cash. In the same mail he received a letter from
Anastasia with no return address demanding that he deposit a second $100,000 in the account. He did
so at once, then stationed himself in the bank's lobby, waiting for her to show up. He waited there every
day for a week in vain. Then news came of her in the form of an official report relayed to him through the
governor's office. She had gone back into the bush to shack up with two bush-blacks and had been
accidentally killed one night when they fought over her. When Eastcliff heard the news he got his
crocrifle, hunted the two men down and blew both their heads off. There were no witnesses, and so the
incident failed to make the bramblevine. But it made the governor's office by way of Eastcliff himself, and
the governor decided that for the sake of the Eastcliff name and Port D'argent's interstellar reputation the
Anastasia affair should be "cosmetized." The bodies of the two bush-blacks were secretly cremated, that
of Anastasia given to Eastcliff for private burial, while information was inserted in the Port D'argent Police
Department files and given to the Port D'argent Spacetimes to the effect that Anastasia, after obtaining an
annulment of her marriage, had left Silver Dollar on a ship bound for Earth.
But although Eastcliff had escaped juridical justice, he had not escaped poetic justice. Less than a
month after murdering Anastasia's two lovers, he discovered he had Meiskin's disease.

A tall bush-black wearing a blue ankle-length cowl and reed sandals emerged from the crowd on
the pier and approached the launch. His wrinkled face was thin, his black eyes cold and uncompromising.
"Ulysses East-cliff?"
Eastcliff nodded.
"A room awaits you at the clinic. As you already know, a chirurgeon has been assigned to your case.
If you will accompany me тАФ"
Eastcliff went below deck, packed a few personal items in a small bag, returned topside, closed and
locked the hatch and joined the blue-cowled man on the pier. The latter led the way through the crowd,
and presently they entered one of the village streets. There were naked children underfoot, and
half-naked mothers with sagging breasts watched from dark doorways, some of them nursing their
young.
Viewed up close, the clinic was even less prepossessing than when viewed from afar. A flagstone
walk crossed an expanse of sun-bleached sward to a porte-cochere as unsightly as it was unnecessary,
and a crude double-door gave into a featureless foyer. Beyond the foyer, however, the complexion of the
clinic changed. The corridor down which the blue-cowled man led Eastcliff had been scrubbed till walls
and floor and ceiling seemed to emanate a bluish glow. Illumination was provided by primitive fluorescent
tubes inset in the ceiling. Immaculate white doors interrupted the walls at regular intervals. Most of them
were open and gave glimpses of neat, square rooms furnished with bed, cabinet and chair. Each bed
contained a bush-black patient. Some were supine; others were sitting up, apparently on the way back to
recovery.
Young bush-black women wearing green caps and green knee-length dresses were making the
morning rounds, some of them carrying trays of medications. They appeared to be modern medications,
and no doubt were тАФ products, probably, of one of the pharmaceutical laboratories of a neighboring
province. But they left him unimpressed. Modern medications did not necessarily imply a modern
hospital.
The point was academic in any case. Meiskin's disease was impervious even to ultramodern
medications.