"George R. R. Martin - The Plague Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

“Who?” prompted Anittas.
“The man is an independent trader, of sorts. Not a very successful one. And he’s been stuck on
ShanDellor, for want of a cargo, for half of a standard year now. He must be getting
desperate—desperate enough, I’d think, so that he’ll jump at this opportunity. He has a small, battered
ship with a long, ridiculous name. It’s not luxurious, but it will take us there, which is all that matters.
There’s no crew to worry about, only the man himself. And he—well, he’s a little ridiculous, too. He’ll
give us no trouble. He’s big, but soft, inside and out. He keeps cats, I hear. Doesn’t much like people.
Drinks a lot of beer, eats too much. I doubt that he even carries a weapon. Reports are that he barely
scrapes by, flitting from world to world and selling absurd trinkets and useless little geegaws from this
beat-up old ship of his. Wackerfuss thinks the man’s a joke. But even if he’s wrong, what can one man
alone do? If he so much as threatens to report us, the hireling and I can dispose of him and feed him to
his cats.”
“Nevis, I’ll have no talk like that!” Jefri Lion objected. “I won’t have any killing on this venture.”
“No?” Nevis said. He nodded toward Rica Dawnstar. “Then why did you hire her?” His smile was very
nasty, somehow; her returning grin was pure mocking malice. “Just so,” Nevis said, “I knew this was the
place. Here’s our man now.”
None of them except Rica Dawnstar was much versed in the art of subtle conspiracy; the other three all
turned to stare at the door, and the man who had just entered. He stood very tall, almost two-and-a-half
meters, and his great soft gut swelled out above his thin metal belt. He had big hands, a long, curiously
blank face, and a stiff, awkward posture; everywhere his skin was as white as bleached bone, and it
appeared that he had not a hair on him anywhere. He wore shiny blue trousers and a deep maroon shirt
whose balloon sleeves were frayed at the ends.
He must have felt their scrutiny, for he turned his head and stared back, his pale face expressionless. He
kept on staring. Celise Waan looked away first, and then Jefri Lion, and finally Anittas. “Who is he?” the
cyborg demanded of Kaj Nevis.
“Wackerfuss calls him Tuffy,” Nevis said. “His real name, I’m told, is Haviland Tuf.”


Haviland Tuf picked up the last of the green star-forts with a delicacy that belied his great size, then
straightened to regard the gaming board with satisfaction. The entire cluster was red; cruisers and
dreadnaughts and star-forts and all the colonies, red everywhere. “I must claim the victory,” he said.
“Again,” said Rica Dawnstar. She stretched, to untie the knots that hours bent over the game had put in
her limbs. She had the deadly grace of a lioness, and beneath her silver mesh-steel vest her needler was
snug in its shoulder holster.
“Perhaps I might be so bold as to suggest another contest,” said Haviland Tuf.
Dawnstar laughed. “No thanks,” she said. “You’re too good at this. I was born a gambler, but with you
it’s no gamble. I’m tired of coming in second.”
“I have been most fortunate in the games we have played thus far,” Haviland Tuf said. “Undoubtedly, my
luck will have run its course by now, and you will obliterate my poor forces on your next attempt.”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” Rica Dawnstar replied, grinning, “but forgive me if I postpone the attempt until the
boredom becomes terminal. At least I’m better than Lion. Right, Jefri?”
Jefri Lion was seated in a corner of the ship’s control room, perusing a stack of old military texts. His
chameleon cloth jacket had turned the same brown as the synthawood paneling of the bulkhead behind
him. “The game does not conform to authentic military principles,” he said, with a hint of annoyance in his
voice. “I employed the same tactics that Stephen Cobalt Northstar used when the 13th Human Fleet
enveloped Hrakkean. Tuf’s counterthrust was completely wrong under the circumstances. If the rules had
been written properly, it ought to have been routed.”
“Indeed,” said Haviland Tuf. “You have the advantage of me, sir. You, after all, have the good fortune to
be a military historian, and I am merely a humble trader. I lack your familiarity with the great campaigns
of history. How fortunate for me that thus far, the deficiencies of the game itself, and my extraordinary