"04 - Space Viking 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

me talk to him. I might have made him understand."

Sesar Karvall was shocked. "Child, you couldn't have subjected yourself to
that! The man is insane!" Then he saw her bare shoulders, and was even more
shocked. "Elaine, your shawl!"

Her hands went up and couldn't find it; she
looked about in confused embarrassment. Amused, Lucas picked it from the shrub
onto which she had tossed it and draped it over her shoulders, his hands
lingering briefly. Then he gestured to the older man to precede them, and they
entered the arbored walk. At the other end, in an open circle, a fountain
played, white marble girls and boys bathing in the jade green basin. Another
piece of loot from one of the Old Federation planets; that was something he'd
tried to avoid in furnishing Traskon New House. There'd be a lot of that

7

coming to Gram after Otto Harkaman took the Enterprise to space.

"I'll have to come back, some time, and visit them," Elaine whispered to him.
"They'll miss me."

"You'll find a lot of new friends at your new home," he whispered back.
"You wait till tomorrow."

"I'm going to put- a word in the Duke's ear about that fellow," Sesar Karvall,
still thinking of Dunnan, was saying. "If he speaks to him, maybe it'll do
some good."

"I doubt it. I don't think Duke Angus has any influence over him at all."

Dunnan's mother had been the Duke's younger sister; from his father he had
inherited what had originally been a prosperous barony. Now it was mortgaged
to the top of the manor house aerial-mast. The Duke had once assumed Dunnan's
debts, and refused to do so a second time. Dunnan had gone to space a few
times, as a junior officer on trade and-raid voyages into the Old Federation.
He was supposed to be a fair astrogator. He had expected his uncle to give him
command of the Enterprise, which had been ridiculous. Disappointed in that, he
had recruited a mercenary company and was seeking military employment. It was
suspected that he was in correspondence with his uncle's worst enemy, Duke
Omfray of Glaspyth.

And he was obsessively in love with Elaine Karvall, a passion which seemed to
nourish itself on its own hopelessness. Maybe it would be a good idea to take
that space-trip right away. There ought to be a ship leaving Bigglersport for
one of the other Sword-Worlds, before long.

They paused at the bead of the escalators; the garden below was thronged with
guests, the bright shawls of the ladies and the coats of the men making
shifting color-patterns among the flowerbeds and on the lawns and under the