"George R. R. Martin - Guardians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

pies will fill you up.”
“Ah,” said Tuf. He took up the pie. “Please proceed.”
So the pie-seller told him, at great rambling length, about the troubles on the world Namor. “So you can
see,” he finally concluded, “why they didn’t come, with all this going on. Not much to exhibit.”
“Of course,” said Haviland Tuf, dabbing his lips. “Sea monsters can be most vexing.”


Namor was a dark green world, moonless and solitary, banded by wispy golden clouds. The Ark
shuddered out of drive and settled ponderously into orbit around it. In the long, narrow communications
room, Haviland Tuf moved from seat to seat, studying the planet on a dozen of the room’s hundred
viewscreens. Three small grey kittens kept him company, bounding across the consoles, pausing only to
slap at each other. Tuf paid them no mind.
A water world, Namor had only one landmass decently large enough to be seen from orbit, and that
none too large. But magnification revealed thousands of islands scattered in long, crescent-shaped
archipelagoes across the deep green seas, earthen jewels strewn throughout the oceans. Other screens
showed the lights of dozens of cities and towns on the nightside, and pulsing dots of energy outlay where
settlements sat in sunlight.
Tuf looked at it all, and then seated himself, flicked on another console, and began to play a war game
with the computer. A kitten bounded up into his lap and went to sleep. He was careful not to disturb it.
Some time later, a second kitten vaulted up and pounced on it, and they began to tussle. Tuf brushed
them to the floor.
It took longer than even Tuf had anticipated, but finally the challenge came, as he had known it would. “
Ship in orbit,” came the demand, “ship in orbit, this is Namor Control. State your name and business.
State your name and business, please. Interceptors have been dispatched. State your name and
business.”
The transmission was coming from the chief land-mass. The Ark tapped into it. At the same time, it found
the ship that was moving toward them—there was only one—and flashed it on another screen.
“I am the Ark,” Haviland Tuf told Namor Control.
Namor Control was a round-faced woman with close-cropped brown hair, sitting at a console and
wearing a deep green uniform with golden piping. She frowned, her eyes flicking to the side, no doubt to
a superior or another console. “Ark,” she said, “state your homeworld. State your homeworld and your
business, please.”
The other ship had opened communications with the planet, the computer indicated. Two more
viewscreens lit up. One showed a slender young woman with a large, crooked nose on a ship’s bridge,
the other an elderly man before a console. They both wore green uniforms, and they were conversing
animatedly in code. It took the computer less than a minute to break it, so Tuf could listen in. “...damned
if I know what it is,” the woman on the ship was saying. “There’s never been a ship that big. My God,
just look at it. Are you getting all this? Has it answered?”
“Ark,” the round-faced woman was still saying, “state your homeworld and your business, please. This is
Namor Control.”
Haviland Tuf cut into the other conversation, to talk to all three of them simultaneously. “This is the Ark,”
he said. “I have no homeworld, sirs. My intentions are purely peaceful—trade and consultation. I learned
of your tragic difficulties, and moved by your plight, I have come to offer you my services.”
The woman on the ship looked startled. “What are you...” she started. The man was equally nonplussed,
but he said nothing, only gaped open-mouthed at Tuf’s blank white visage.
“This is Namor Control, Ark,” said the round-faced woman. “We are closed to trade. Repeat, we are
closed to trade. We are under martial law here.”
By then the slender woman on the ship had composed herself. “Ark, this is Guardian Kefira Qay,
commanding NGS Sunrazor. We are armed, Ark. Explain yourself. You are a thousand times larger
than any trader I have ever seen, Ark. Explain yourself or be fired upon.”