"Anderson, Poul - Man-Kzin Wars - Inconstant Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

occupation, almost half a century of it. Alpha Centaurian men and women
endured, or waged guerrilla warfare from remote and desolate bases, until
the liberation. Who would question their dedication to our species as a
whole?
At least, it was an obvious symbolism to make them the host folk of the
Commission; and Tiamat, not yet into its postwar decline, was a natural
choice for the seat.
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"Good evening, " replied Dorcas Glengarry Saxtorph. The headwaiter had
immediately identified her as being from the Solar System and greeted her
in English. I was to meet Professor Tregennis. The reservation may be in
the name of Laurinda Brozik." You didn't just walk into the Star Well; it
was small and expensive.
Very briefly, his smoothness failed him and he let his gaze linger. Ten
years after the end of the war, when outworlders had become a substantial
fraction of the patronage, she was nonetheless a striking sight. A Belter,
185 centimeters in height, slender to the point of leanness, she was not in
that respect different from those who had inhabited the Swarm for
generations. However, you seldom met features so severely classic,
fair-skinned, with large green eyes under arching brows. The molding of her
head was emphasized by the Sol-Belter style, scalp depilated except for a
crest of mahogany hair that in her case swept halfway down her back. A
shimmery gray gown

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folded and refolded itself around carriage and gestures which, even for
a person of spacer ancestry, were extraordinarily precise.
The headwaiter regained professionalism. "Ah, yes, of course, madame."
Dorcas didn't show her forty Earthyears much, but nobody would take her
for a girl. "This way, please."
The tables were arranged around a sunken transparency, ten meters across,
which gave on the surface of Tiamat and thus the sky beyond.
Nonreflecting, in the dim interior light it seemed indeed a well of night
which the stars crowded, slowly streaming. The table Dorcas reached was
on the bottom tier, with a view directly down into infinity. A glowlamp
on it cast softness over cloth, silver, ceramic, and the two people
already seated.
Arthur Tregennis rose, courtly as ever. A Plateaunian of Crew descent,
the astrophysicist stood as tall as she did and still more slim,
practically skeletal. He had the flared hook nose and high cheekbones of
his kindred; the long nail on his left little finger proclaimed him an
aristocrat of his planet, never subject to manual labor. Dorcas sometimes
wondered why he kept that affectation, when he admitted to having
sympathized with the democrats and their revolution, 33 years ago. Habit,
perhaps. Otherwise he was an unassuming old fellow.
"Welcome, my lady," he said. His English was rather flat. Since the
advent of hyperdrive and hyperwave, he'd been to so many scientific