"Silistra - 01 - High Couch Of Silistra" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

He raked his fingers through the harth mass of his hair, shaking his head slowly from side to side, and handed me the half-full glass of brin.,
I took it and tried to suppress my amusement as he strode to M'lennin's side. My former couch-mate would be very annoyed, but he had little choice. M'len could not, in his position of mentor to Dellin, refuse him. I had no choice at all, but it happened that I wanted the Liaison Second. I would, in any case, have had to abide by M'len's decision, even if Dellin had been old and ugly. Had he been the least attractive man on Silistra, I would have answered him the same. But he was not.
I watched them. Dellin bent over M'lennin. M'lennin rubbed the back of his neck and played with his glass. The Liaison Second nodded, and the Liaison First smiled. I thought the smile a trifle strained from where I leaned against the Torth sculpture at one end of the long, narrow, high-ceilinged gray room.
It was good to watch Khaf-Re Dellin move, I decided as he came toward me, graceful, fluid, catlike on the balls of his feet. He did not swagger or strut, but moved with sinuous, unconscious ease. In his hand he held a second glass of amber brin.
When he reached me, he took the half-glass from my hands and gave me the full one. He leaned one shoulder against the wall, looking down at me with a bemused expression on his strong-boned face.
"I have little understanding of Silistran customs, but I would be a fool did I not wish to learn." He reached out and touched my hair, then my neck.
"You struck, then," asked I, "a satisfactory agreement with M'len?" I read his path, as it is said, by precipitating the question and watching his mind react.
"You are mine, as the Liaison put it, to command until sun's rise. I command you, then, to tell me now if you would prefer to avoid my touch." His face

was but inches from mine; his narrowed eyes searched.
"Avoid it." I laughed. "Does the musician avoid his instrument? Does the singer avoid the song? Such is my chan-tera; my study, my vocation, my way of life!" I turned my face to his. He took a kiss from me. I tasted my own blood as his lips pressed down upon mine. His hands were on my buttocks.
After a time he pushed me from him and held me at arm's length, his fingers digging into my shoulders.
"Your answer does not satisfy me, woman. Do you want me?" He shook me.
"Do you want me to want you, Liaison? Your mouth says one thing, your touch another," I replied. His face showed no expression, but he turned me and pushed me toward the table, slapping me ungently on the rear. For that question, the Liaison Second had no answer.
"We have delayed the meal overlong," said he instead. The pilot and the Liaison First stared at us until we were seated behind the roast parr. M'lennin drummed his fingers on the tabletop. He had the look of a man who had tasted kifra gone sour.
"Where are you from?" I asked, passing Dellin his plate, upon which I had placed three thick strips of parr, juicy with blood.
"M'ksakka is where I grew up," said he, accepting the cream sauce I passed him. He spooned some on the stewed name he had chosen from a large bowl of mixed fruit, "but I was born on Itabe, of a M'ksakkan father and Itabic mother. Why?"
"Curiosity. You remind me of Mien in some ways," I said, shooting a look at the Liaison First. "He has never truly gotten used to Silistra. I think perhaps he is afraid that it is all just a dream and one day he will awaken and find himself Liaison to a mining colony on Centaus. They instill a strange brand of morality on M'ksakka," I added, serving the ruby kifra wine.
"Not as strange a brew as is found in Astria," growled M'lennin. "I might prefer Centaus, were I given the choice." He popped a chunk of grintafish,

crispy and brown, into his mouth. "I hear the food on Centaus is incomparable."
We all laughed. Centaus was a bare, airless rock. The colony was underground, the food hydroponically grown.
"And there is no blasted chaldra to drive a man mad. Nor chaldless outlaws, nor highborn ladies of the evening. Just men making a good living, who have no compunction about doing so." He drained his wineglass and refilled it. "Planet of dizzy whores," he grumbled.
Dellin had one hand between my thighs beneath the table. With the other he forked a bit of mashed tun into his mouth.
"I see nothing wrong with Silistran food. In fact, I rather like it," said the Betenese pilot, emptying one decanter of kifra and starting upon the second. The Beten was quietly getting very drunk.
"Has Estri told you, Khaf-Re, that she intends to make her way to Arlet on a mission of great chaldric importance? Everything on Silistra has chaldric importance," said M'lennin bitterly.
I choked on a bit of narne. I had wanted to tell Dellin in my own way, at a more opportune moment.
The Liaison Second squeezed my thigh. He put down his fork and looked at me.
"Perhaps," said he, "if I can get a pass's advance on my salary, the Well-Keepress of Astria will allow me to deliver her to Arlet?" He was grinning.
"Doubtless, if that is the case, she would allow it," said I, straight-faced.
"Done," snarled M'lennin around a mouthful of denter, "though, if the Liaison Second will allow the Liaison First to advise him, there are other women on Silistra, many more reasonably priced. One should taste the vintage before stocking the cellar."
"That's one bottle I would buy unopened," mumbled Dalf Tragett, the pilot.
"Thank you, Master Astrogator," I acknowledged, but the Beten slumped forward on the table. Kifra is

smooth and deceptively delicate, but it is potent.
"Speak to me of these chaldless," said Dellin to M'lennin, as the button-bristled tubular menial robot blinked its way to the table with a pot of steaming rana grasped in its jointed metal tentacle.
As I served the sobering rust-colored brew to the three of us, M'lennin launched into a tirade concerning the ungrateful malcontents that harried tourists and waylaid star-goods caravans. It annoyed him terribly that the chaldless seldom bothered Silistrans. The pilot snored loudly. I thought he would sleep until sun's rise.
M'lennin ran dry of words as I served the fruited binnirin cake, and we ate it in silence. The Liaison First then pulled out a large-bowled ragony pipe and filled it carefully from his parr-hide pouch. I knew what he had filled it with from the weed's yellow smoke and acrid odor. We would smoke danne, the rare and costly psychotropic herb that grows high on the Sabembe range. Three puffs would put an out-worlder such as Dellin out of commission for hours.
I leaned against Dellin's shoulder and whispered a warning in his ear. He nodded, and when M'len passed him the pipe, he inhaled only a tiny amount and blew it out almost immediately. He passed it to me.
I dragged deep and held the smoke. I felt my limbs tingle and the colors in the room brighten. I handed the pipe back to the Liaison First, leaning across Dellin's lap. My breast brushed his hip and burned at the heat. My need was much intensified by the drug. I looked up at Dellin. His face was beaded with sweat.
"No more," said he to M'lennin, pushing back his chair, "else I will be in no shape to use her." He gestured vaguely to me. "Get up."
I got up, putting my arm around the unsteady out-worlder's waist.
"Your room or mine?" he murmured, nuzzling my neck.
"Mine," said I, maneuvering him toward the door.
"Tasa," said the Liaison First indistinctly from his

armed sueded chair. I doubted M'lennin would make it to his couch this night.
"Tasa," I replied, steering Dellin around the corner.
The danne had been of exceptional strength. I stepped square on Santh's tufted tail where he lay stretched out beside Sithantha across the threshold to my apartment. He growled softly, opened one eye, and regarded me balefully. Supporting Dellin with one arm as best I could, I leaned over the hulion and slapped the lockplate.
"Step carefully," said I to Dellin.