"13 - Explorers of Gor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

"I think you like her," I said.
"Nonsense," he said. "She is only a slave."
"Perhaps Samos has found a love slave," I said.
"An Earth girl?" laughed Samos.
"Perhaps," I said.
"Preposterous," said Samos. "She is only a slave, only a thing to serve, and to beat and abuse, if it should please me."
"But is not any slave," I asked, "even a love slave?"
"That is true," said Samos, smiling. Gorean men are not easy with their slaves, even those for whom they care deeply.
"I think Samos, first slaver of Port Kar, first captain of the council of captains, has grown fond of a blond Earth girl."
Samos looked at me, angrily. Then he shrugged. "She is the first girl I have felt in this fashion toward," he said. "It is interesting. It is a strange feeling."
"I note that you did not sell her," I said.
"Perhaps I shall," he said.
"I see," I said.
"The first time, even, that I took her in my arms," said Samos, "she was in some way piteously helpless, different even from the others."
"Is not any slave piteously helpless in the arms of her master?" I asked.
"Yes," said Samos. "But she seemed somehow different, incredibly so, vulnerably so."
"Perhaps she knew herself, in your touch, as her love master," I said.
"She felt good in my hands," he said.
"Be strong, Samos," I smiled.
"I shall," he said.
I did not doubt his word. Samos was one of the hardest of Gorean men. The blond Earth girl had found a strong, uncompromising master.
"But let us not speak of slaves," I said, "girls who serve for our diversion or recreation, but of serious matters, of the concerns of men."
"Agreed," said he.
There was a time for slaves, and a time for matters of importance.
"Yet there is little to report," said he, "in the affairs of worlds."
"The Kurii are quiet," I said.
"Yes," said he.
"Beware of a silent enemy," I smiled.
"Of course," said Samos.
"It is unusual that you should invite me to your house," I said, "to inform me that you have nothing to report."
"Do you think you are the only one upon Gor who labors occasionally in the cause of Priest-Kings?" asked Samos.
"I suppose not," I said. "Why?" I asked. I did not understand the question.
"How little we know of our world," sighed Samos.
"I do not understand," I said.
"Tell me what you know of the Cartius," he said.
"It is an important subequatorial waterway," I said. "It flows west by northwest, entering the rain forests and emptying into Lake Ushindi, which lake is drained by the Kamba and the Nyoka rivers. The Kamba flows directly into Thassa. The Nyoka flows into Schendi harbor, which is the harbor of the port of Schendi, and moves thence to Thassa." Schendi was an equatorial free port, well known on Gor. It is also the home port of the League of Black Slavers.
"It was, at one time, conjectured," said Samos, "that the Cartius proper was a tributary of the Vosk."
"I had been taught that," I said.
"We now know that the Thassa Cartius and the subequatorial Cartius are not the same river."
"It had been thought, and shown on many maps," I said, "that the subequatorial Cartius not only flowed into Lake Ushindi, but emerged northward, traversing the sloping western flatlands to join the Vosk at Turmus." Turmus was the last major river port on the Vosk before the almost impassable marshes of the delta.
"Calculations performed by the black geographer, Ramani, of the island of Anango, suggested that given the elevations involved the two rivers could not be the same. His pupil, Shaba, was the first civilized man to circumnavigate Lake Ushindi. He discovered that the Cartius, as was known, enters Lake Ushindi, but that only two rivers flow out of Ushindi, the Kamba and Nyoka. The actual source of the tributary to the Vosk, now called the Thassa Cartius, as you know, was found five years later by the. explorer, Ramus of Tabor, who, with a small expedition, over a period of nine months, fought and bartered his way through the river tribes, beyond the six cataracts, to the Ven highlands. The Thassa Cartius, with its own tributaries, drains the highlands and the descending plains."
"That has been known to me for over a year," I said. "Why do you speak of it now?"
"We are ignorant of so many things," mused Samos.
I shrugged. Much of Gor was terra incognita. Few knew well the lands on the east of the Voltai and Thentis ranges, for example, or what lay west of the farther islands, near Cos and Tyros. It was more irritating, of course, to realize that even considerable areas of territory above Schendi, south of the Vosk, and west of Ar, were unknown. "There was good reason to speculate that the Cartius entered the Vosk, by way of Lake Ushindi," I said.
"I know," said Samos, "tradition, and the directions and flow of the rivers. Who would have understood, of the cities, that they were not the same?"
"Even the bargemen of the Cartius proper, the subequatorial Cartius, and those of the Thassa Cartius, far to the north, thought the rivers to be but one waterway."
"Yes," said Samos. "And until the calculations of Ramani, and the expeditions of Shaba and Ramus, who had reason to believe otherwise?"
"The rain forests closed the Cartius proper for most civilized persons from the south," I said, "and what trading took place tended to be confined to the ubarates of the southern shore of Lake Ushindi. It was convenient then, for trading purposes, to make use of either the Kamba or the Nyoka to reach Thassa."
"That precluded the need to find a northwest passage from Ushindi," said Samos.
"Particularly since it was known of the hostility of the river tribes on what is now called the Thassa Cartius."