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

“Indeed,” said Haviland Tuf. “Threats will avail you little, Guardian. I am most sorely vexed. I have come
all this long way from Braelourn to offer you my aid and solace, and you meet me with threats and
hostility.” A kitten leapt up into his lap. Tuf scooped it up with a huge white hand, and deposited it on the
console in front of him, where the viewer would pick it up. He gazed down at it sorrowfully. “There is no
trust left in humanity,” he said to the kitten.
“Hold your fire, Sunrazor,” said the elderly man. “Ark, if your intentions are truly peaceful, explain
yourself. What are you? We are hard-pressed here, Ark, and Namor is a small, undeveloped world. We
have never seen your like before. Explain yourself.”
Haviland Tuf stroked the kitten. “Always I must truckle to suspicion,” he told it. “They are fortunate that I
am so kind-hearted, or else I would simply depart and leave them to their fate.” He looked up, straight
into the viewer. “Sir,” he said. “I am the Ark. I am Haviland Tuf, captain and master here, crew entire.
You are troubled by great monsters from the depths of your seas, I have been told. Very well. I shall rid
you of them.”
“Ark, this is Sunrazor. How do you propose doing that?”
“The Ark is a seedship of the Ecological Engineering Corps,” said Haviland Tuf with stiff formality. “I am
an ecological engineer and a specialist in biological warfare.”
“Impossible,” said the old man. “The EEC was wiped out a thousand years ago, along with the Federal
Empire. None of their seedships remain.”
“How distressing,” said Haviland Tuf. “Here I sit in an illusion. No doubt, now that you have told me my
ship does not exist, I shall sink right through it and plunge into your atmosphere, where I shall burn up as
I fall.”
“Guardian,” said Kefira Qay from the Sunrazor, “these seedships may indeed no longer exist, but I am
fast closing on something that my scopes tell me is almost thirty kilometers long. It does not appear to be
an illusion.”
“I am not yet falling,” admitted Haviland Tuf.
“Can you truly help us?” asked the round-faced woman at Namor Control.
“Why must I always be doubted?” Tuf asked the small grey kitten.
“Lord Guardian, we must give him the chance to prove what he says,” insisted Namor Control.
Tuf looked up. “Threatened, insulted, and doubted as I have been, nonetheless my empathy for your
situation bids me to persist. Perhaps I might suggest that Sunrazor dock with me, so to speak. Guardian
Qay may come aboard and join me for an evening meal, while we converse. Surely your suspicions
cannot extend to mere conversation, that most civilized of human pastimes.”
The three Guardians conferred hurriedly with each other and with a person or persons offscreen, while
Haviland Tuf sat back and toyed with the kitten. “I shall name you Suspicion,” he said to it, “to
commemorate my reception here. Your siblings shall be Doubt, Hostility, Ingratitude and Foolishness.”
“We accept your proposal, Haviland Tuf,” said Guardian Kefira Qay from the bridge of the Sunrazor.
“Prepare to be boarded.”
“Indeed,” said Tuf. “Do you like mushrooms?”


The shuttle deck of the Ark was as large as the landing field of a major starport, and seemed almost a
junkyard for derelict spacecraft. The Ark’s own shuttles stood trim in their launch berths, five identical
black ships with rakish lines and stubby triangular wings angling back, designed for atmospheric flight and
still in good repair. Other craft were less impressive. A teardrop-shaped trading vessel from Avalon
squatted wearily on three extended landing legs, next to a driveshift courier scored by battle, and a
Karaleo lionboat whose ornate trim was largely gone. Elsewhere stood vessels of stranger, more alien
design.
Above, the great dome cracked into a hundred pie-wedge segments, and drew back to reveal a small
yellow sun surrounded by stars, and a dull green manta-shaped ship of about the same size as one of
Tuf’s shuttles. The Sunrazor settled, and the dome closed behind it. When the stars had been blotted out