"George R. R. Martin - And Seven Times Never Kill Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

"None," Ryther said, looking off toward the forest. The wind was kicking
up the dust around her, and her shoulders slumped, as if she were very
tired. "The Jamies won't care, and if they did, what could they do?"
NeKrol remembered the heavy red-bound book that Wyatt had given
him months ago. "And Bakkalon the pale child fashioned his children out
of steel," he quoted, "for the stars will break those of softer flesh. And in
the hand of each new-made infant He placed a beaten sword, telling them,
'This is the Truth and the Way.' " He spat in disgust. "That is their very
creed. And we can do nothing?"
Her face was empty of expression now. "I will leave you two lasers. In a
year, make sure the Jaenshi know how to use them. I believe I know what
sort of trade goods I should bring."



The Jaenshi lived in clans (as neKrol thought of them) of twenty to
thirty, each clan divided equally between adults and children, each having
its own home-forest and worship pyramid. They did not build; they slept
curled up in trees around their pyramid. For food, they foraged; juicy
blue-black fruits grew everywhere, and there were three varieties of edible
berries, a hallucinogenic leaf, and a soapy yellow root the Jaenshi dug for.
NeKrol had found them to be hunters as well, though infrequently. A clan
would go for months without meat, while the snuffling brown bushogs
multiplied all around them, digging up roots and playing with the
children.
Then suddenly, when the bushog population had reached some critical
point, the Jaenshi spearmen would walk among them calmly, killing two
out of every three, and that week great hog roasts would be held each
night around the pyramid. Similar patterns could be discerned with the
white-bodied tree slugs that sometimes covered the fruit trees like a
plague, until the Jaenshi gathered them for a stew, and with the
fruit-stealing pseudomonks that haunted the higher limbs.
So far as neKrol could tell, there were no predators in the forests of the
Jaenshi. In his early months on their world, he had worn a long force-knife
and a hand-laser as he walked from pyramid to pyramid on his trade
route. But he had never encountered anything even remotely hostile, and
now the knife lay broken in his kitchen, while the laser was long lost.
The day after the Lights of Jolostar departed, neKrol went armed into
the forest again, with one of Ryther's hunting lasers slung over his
shoulder.
Less than two kilometers from his base, neKrol found the camp of the
Jaenshi he called the waterfall folk. They lived up against the side of a
heavily-wooded hill, where a stream of tumbling blue-white water came
sliding and bouncing down, dividing and rejoining itself over and over, so
the whole hillside was an intricate glittering web of waterfalls and rapids
and shallow pools and spraying wet curtains. The clan's worship pyramid
sat in the bottommost pool, on a flat gray stone in the middle of the
eddies; taller than most Jaenshi, coming up to neKrol's chin, looking
infinitely heavy and solid and immovable, a three-sided block of dark,
dark red.