"Charles DeVet & Katherine MacLean - Cosmic Checkmate" - читать интересную книгу автора (DeVet Charles)

three short moves I maneuvered a pukt four rows forward. From the
particular square on which it now rested it could be moved a maximum of
three paces forward, two left oblique, or three right oblique—with
unlimited side and backward movement.

The old one moved to intercept my pukt, and I split his force apart with
two men I had set in strategic positions on either side.

The roving portion of my mind caught a half-completed gesture of
admiration at the sudden completion of the trap from a youth directly
ahead of me. And with the motion, and the glimpse of the youth's face,
something slipped into place in my memory. Some subconscious counting
finished itself, and I knew that there had been too many of these youths,
with faces like this one, finely boned and smooth, with slender delicate
necks and slim hands and movements that were cool and detached. Far
too many to be a normal number in a population of adults and children.

As if drawn, my glance went past the forms of the watchers around the
booth and plumbed the passing crowd to the figure of a man, a
magnificent masculine type of the Vel-dian race, thick-shouldered and
strong, thoughtful in motion, yet with something of the swagger of a
gladiator, who, as he walked, spoke to the woman who held his arm,
leaning toward her cherishingly as if he protected a great prize.

She was wearing a concealing cloak, but her face was beautiful, her hair
semi-long, and in spite of the cloak, I could see that her body was
full-fleshed and almost voluptuously feminine. I had seen few such women
on Velda.

Two of the slim, delicately built youths went by arm in arm, walking
with a slight defiant sway of bodies, and looked at the couple as they
passed, with pleasure in the way the man's fascinated attention clove to
the woman, and looked at the beauty of the woman possessively without
lust, and passed by, their heads held higher in pride as if they shared a
secret triumph with her. Yet they were strangers.

I had an answer to my counting. The "youths" with the large eyes and
smooth delicate heads, with the slim straight asexual bodies, thought of
themselves as women. I had not seen them treated with the subdued
attraction and conscious avoidance one sex gives another, but by
numbers… My memory added the number of these "youths" to the number
of figures and faces that had been obviously female. It totaled to almost
half the population I had seen. No matter what the biological explanation,
it seemed reasonable that half…

I bent my head, to not see the enigma of the boy-woman face watching
me, and braced my elbow to steady my hand as I moved. For two weeks I
had been on Velda and during the second week I had come out of hiding
and passed as a Veldian. It was incredible that I had been operating under
a misunderstanding as to which were women, and which men, and not