"Norton, Andre - Solar Queen 03- Voodoo Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

"Oh, I don't care about the game preserves, though they're worth seeing, too. It's the people themselves--"

"But they're Terran settlers, or at least from Terran stock, aren't they?"

"Sure," Tau sipped his coffee slowly. "But there are settlers and settlers, son. And a lot depends upon when
they left Terran and why, and who they were--also what happened to them after they landed out here."
"And Khatkans are really special?"

"Well, they have an amazing history. The colony was founded by escaped prisoners--and just one racial
stock. They took off from Earth close to the end of the Second Atomic War. That was a race war,
remember? Which made it doubly ugly." Tau's mouth twisted in disgust. "As if the color of a man's skin
makes any difference in what lies under it! One side in that line-up tried to take over Africa--herded most
of the natives into a giant concentration camp and practiced genocide on a grand scale. Then they were
cracked themselves, hard and heavy. During the confusion some survivors in the camp staged a revolt,
helped by the enemy. They captured an experimental station hidden in the center of the camp and made a
break into space in two ships which had been built there. That voyage must have been a nightmare, but
they were desperate. Somehow they made it out here to the Rim and set down on Khatka without power
enough to take off again--and by then most of them were dead.

"But we humans, no matter what our race, are a tough breed. The refugees discovered that climatically
their new world was not too different from Africa, a lucky chance which might happen only once in a
thousand times. So they thrived, the handful who survived. But the white technicians they had kidnaped to
run the ships didn't. For they set up a color bar in reverse. The lighter your skin, the lower you were in the
social scale. By that kind of selective breeding the present Khatkans are very dark indeed.

"They reverted to the primitive for survival. Then, about two hundred years ago, long before the first
Survey Scout discovered them, something happened. Either the parent race mutated, or, as sometimes
occurs, a line of people of superior gifts emerged--not in a few isolated births, but with surprising
regularity in five family clans. There was a short period of power struggle until they realized the
foolishness of civil war and formed an oligarchy, heading a loose tribal organization. With the Five
Families to push and lead, a new civilization developed, and when Survey came to call they were no longer
savages. Combine bought the trade rights about seventy-five years ago. Then the Company and the Five
Families got together and marketed a luxury item to the galaxy. You know how every super-jet big shot on
twenty-five planets wants to say he's hunted on Khatka. And if he can point out a qraz head on his wall, or
wear a tail bracelet, he's able to strut with the best. To holiday on Khatka is both fabulous and
fashionable--and very, very profitable for the natives and for Combine who sells transportation to the
travelers."

"I hear they have poachers, too," Dane remarked.

"Yes, that naturally follows. You know what a glam skin brings on the market. Wherever you have a
rigidly controlled export you're going to have poachers and smugglers. But the Patrol doesn't go to
Khatka. The natives handle their own criminals. Personally, I'd cheerfully take a ninety-nine-year sentence
in the Lunar mines in place of what the Khatkans dish out to a poacher they net!"

"So that rumor has spread satisfactorily!"

Coffee slopped over the brim of Tau's mug and Dane dropped the packet of steak concentrate he was about
to feed into the cooker. Chief Ranger Asaki loomed in the doorway of the mess as suddenly as if he had
been teleported to that point.