"Zach Hughes - For Texas and Zed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

ForTexasand Zed by Zach Hughes

Chapter One

"Well, sirs, you swing down the Orion Arm with the fires of a sun in your belly, point out in the plane of
the disc toward Carina and turn right to Puppis. Beacon blink on the RR Lyrae stars near Orion past the
black hole in Taurus. When you see the Beta Canis Majoris on the left you blink on the giant Cepheid on
an angle of thirty-five to the galactic ecliptic to Auriga and after that it's a matter of blinking by the seat of
your pants."

"And, as I follow your rather poetic instructions," said Jum Anguls, First Leader, Ursa Major Sector,
"you end up in nowhere."

"In the big lonesome," Murichon Burns said. "The boonies. The outback."

"Are we wasting the gentleman's time?" asked the lady, with an imperious stare aimed in Murichon's
direction. She wore stylish starcloth, spangled, transparent, her tipped mammaries soft peaks pushing
against the frail material.

Anguls chuckled, crossing his tightly clad, fleshy thighs. "When dealing with provincials—" He winked at
Murichon. "Gwyn has so little patience, you see. They move swiftly on the old Earth."

"To talk in specifics when dealing with honest traders is expected," Gwyn said, forcing her full lips into a
semblance of a smile. Her eyes, in her dark face, were glowing jewels, slanted upward. Her skin had the
richness of satin-deep space, but lighter, tending to creamy brown, the complexion of the mother planet.
In contrast to her, to the white softness of the skin of Jum Anguls, Murichon was reddened, roughed,
weathered. His rough spacecloth, dull blue, against the richness of the others' clothing, seemed rude. Yet
he was at ease while Anguls chewed a fingernail and looked at him askance and the female blinked at him
through force-grown lashes of half an inch length.

"The Republic is not asking for inclusion on the Empire's star maps," Murichon said. "I am here to sell
meat. If you're buying, fine. If not—"

Murichon looked out the huge expanse of window and saw the city below, alive, blinking, moving. Trails
of fire where arcs lit the lanes, flashes of color as ad-signs lured and promised, the movement of traffic at
ten levels, all below, crawling up in whites and reds in the foothills and then abating in density as the
galaxy itself thinned toward home. And as he looked b could imagine, hear in his mind, the din, the roar,
the sigh and moan of millions crowded into small spaces and his heart flew the countless parsecs and
yearned for the Bojacks of Texas, the trackless plains with the grazing herds, the wide sky, the soft
caress of the winds of home.

"We are, of course, buying," Anguls said, "but I think the Lady Gwyn has a point. We do not intend to
take delivery on meacr steaks dehydrated to the point of cured leather or softened to carrion."

"You ate," Murichon said. The table testified to that. He'd grilled the steaks himself, after picking them at
random from the selection he'd brought in on theTexas Queen . "Quick-frozen. In transport for
thirty-two standard days—"

"Via Orion and Taurus and the third Cepheid on the left," Lady Gwyn said.
 "I know a shortcut," Murichon grinned. He turned, bellowed. The loud call startled the Lady Gwyn,