"Andre Norton - Cat's Eye - uc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

Troy. As if drawn by an invisible cord, he entered

Kyger's.
He was given no time to look about the outer

reception lounge with its wall cabinets of more min-
iature other-world scenes, for the owner of the eyes
was awaiting him impatiently. Used as he was to
oddities, human, humanoid, and nonhuman, Troy still
found the small man strange enough to study covertly.
He could have walked under Horan's out-stretched
arm but his small, wiry body was well proportioned
and not that of a dwarf. What hair he had was black
and grew in small tufted knobs tight to the rounded
bowl of the skull. In addition, there was a rough brush
of the same black on his upper lip and two tufts or
knots on his chin, one just below the center of his
lower lip and the other on the point ofthejawbeneath.

His clothing was the conventional one-piece suit of
an employed subcitizen, with the striking addition of

12




a pair of boots clinging tightly to his thin legs and
extending knee-high, fashioned of reptile skin as soft
as glove leather, giving off tiny prismatic sparks with
every movement of their wearer. About a slight potbelly
he had a belt of the same hide, and the knife that
swung from it was not only longer but also wider than
those usually worn in Tikil.

"Come—" His voice was guttural. A crook of finger
pointed the way, and Troy followed him through two
more showrooms into a passage from which opened a
number of screened doors. Now the effluvium of
animal—a great many animals—was strong, and
sounds from each of the screened doors they passed
testified to the stock Kyger kept on hand. Troy's guide
continued to the end of the hall, set his small hand
into the larger impression of a palm lock, and then
stood aside for Horan to enter.

If the yellow man was an oddity, the man who sat
waiting for Troy to cross his office was almost as great
a surprise. Horan had seen many of the merchants of
Tikil, and all of them had been glittering objects indeed.