"Michael Moorcock - The Blood Red Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

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The Blood Red Game
by Michael MOORCOCK

PROLOGUE

Renark was a wanderer in the galaxy for two years - but he was not lonely. Renark could never be
lonely, for the galaxy was his omnipresent friend and he was aware of its movements. Even the
peculiar control exercised on it by forces, which he could not sense, was as comforting as its
presence. He moved about in it and contained awareness of every atom of it in his long, thin-boned
skull. He wandered purposely through the teeming galaxy for two swift years and then, when ready,
journeyed out towards the Rim...

ONE

The three of them met, at last, in a terrible town called Migaa on the harsh, bright edge of a
wilderness. Both town and planet were called Migaa and it was the Last Chance planet for the
galaxy's fugitives.

Renark disembarked from his cruiser, uncomfortable under the glare of the diamond-bright sun. He
threaded his way through the great looming shapes of a hundred other ships, his mind searching the
town ahead for his two friends. His skilled brain probed the shapes of streets and buildings,
people and objects until at last he had located them, half a mile away on the other side of the
town.

He strode briskly from the spaceport and there were no Customs officers to stop him here. He kept
his friends' forms firmly fixed in his mind as he hurried in their direction. They were agitated
and he guessed they might be in trouble.

People stared at him as he passed a very tall, very gaunt man with deep-set black eyes in a long
skull a brooding face in repose. But they didn't stare at his face - they thought him remarkable
mainly because he wore no apparent weapon. Almost all the men and women who came to Migaa came
hurriedly - but they also came armed.

Only Renark walked purposefully along the metal-paved streets, through the glinting steel
buildings. The others moved aimlessly, wearing dark lenses to ward off the glare of the desert
reflected in the steel and chrome of the buildings. He noted little transport on the streets, and
what there was moved lazily. He thought the town had an exhausted air - yet at the same time it
possessed an atmosphere of expectancy. It was a peculiar mood - and it smothered Migaa.

He noted also a shared quality in the faces of the men and women, a set expression, which tried
vainly to disguise the hope lurking in their eyes. They seemed afraid of hoping, yet evidently
could do nothing else. Migaa - or what Migaa offered - was their last chance. It was Renark's too,
but for other, less selfish, reasons.

When he reached the building where he sensed his two friends were, it wasn't the tavern he'd
expected. This was called The Drift Inn, like hundreds of other taverns throughout the galaxy, but
this one's name had a special significance.