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

dangerous. To get what they want out of this, they needed Nevis, or somebody like Nevis. They have a
nice four-way split set up, but Kaj has the kind of reputation that makes you wonder if he’ll settle for a
fourth. I’m here to see that he does.” She shrugged, and patted her needler in its shoulder holster.
“Besides, I’m insurance against any other complications that might arise.”
“Might I point out that you yourself constitute an additional complication?”
She smiled icily. “Just don’t point it out to Lion,” she said, rising and stretching. “You think about it, Tuf.
The way I see it, Nevis has underestimated you. Don’t you go underestimating him. Or me. Never,
never, never underestimate me. The time may come when you’ll wish you had an ally. And it may come
sooner than you’d like.”


Three days shy of arrival, Celise Waan was complaining again over dinner. Tuf had served a spiced
vegetable brouhaha in the manner of Halagreen; a piquant dish, but for the fact that this was the sixth such
serving on the voyage. The anthropologist shoved the vegetables around on her plate, made a face, and
said, “Why can’t we have some real food?”
Tuf paused, speared a fat mushroom deftly with his fork, lifted it in front of his face. He regarded it in
silence for a moment, shifted the angle of his head and regarded it from another angle, turned it around
and regarded that aspect of it, and finally prodded it lightly with his finger. “I fail to grasp the nature of
your complaint, madam,” he said at last. “This mushroom, at least, seems real enough to my own poor
senses. True, it is but a small sample of the whole. Perhaps the rest of the brouhaha is illusory. Yet I think
not.”
“You know what I meant,” Celise Waan said in a shrill tone. “I want meat.”
“Indeed,” said Haviland Tuf. “I myself want wealth beyond measure. Such fantasies are easily dreamed,
and less easily made real.”
“I’m tired of all these puling vegetables!” Celise Waan screeched. “Are you telling me that there is not a
bit of meat to be had on this entire puling ship?”
Tuf made a steeple of his fingers. “It was not my intent to convey such misinformation, certainly,” he said.
“I am not an eater of flesh myself, but there is some small poor quantity of meat aboard the Cornucopia
of Excellent Goods at Low Prices, this I freely admit.”
A look of furious satisfaction crossed Celise Waan’s face. She glanced at each of the other diners in turn.
Rica Dawnstar was trying to suppress a grin; Kaj Nevis was not even trying; Jefri Lion was looking
fretful. “You see,” she told them, “I told you he was keeping the good food for himself.” With all
deliberation, she picked up her plate and spun it across the room. It rang off a metal bulkhead and
dumped its load of spiced brouhaha on Rica Dawnstar’s unmade bed. Rica smiled sweetly. “We just
swapped bunks, Waan,” she said.
“I don’t care,” Celise Waan said. “I’m going to get a decent meal for once. I suppose the rest of you will
be wanting to share now.”
Rica smiled. “Oh no, dear. It’s all yours.” She finished up her brouhaha, cleaned her plate with a crust of
onion bread. Lion looked uncomfortable, and Kaj Nevis said, “If you can get this meat out of Tuf, it’s all
yours.”
“Excellent!” she proclaimed. “Tuf, bring me this meat!”
Haviland Tuf regarded her impassively. “True, the contract I made with Kaj Nevis requires me to feed
you through the duration of this voyage. Nothing was said about the nature of the provender, however.
Always I am put upon. Now I must cater to your culinary whims, it seems. Very well, such is my poor lot
in life. And yet, now I find myself taken by a sudden whim of my own. If I must indulge your whim,
would it not be equitable that you should similarly bend to mine?”
Waan frowned suspiciously. “What do you mean?”
Tuf spread his hands. “It is nothing, really. In return for the meat you crave, I ask only a moment’s
indulgence. I have grown most curious of late, and I would have that curiosity satisfied. Rica Dawnstar
has warned me that, unsatisfied, curiosity will surely kill my cats.”