"Joel Rosenberg - Ties of Blood and Silver" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenberg Joel C)

The actual human population of Oroga is believed to be approximately four million. There is a transitory
schrift population, almost exclusively members of the metal-and-jewel-worker's schtann, who provide
handcrafted jewelry for the Elwereans. There are believed to be no other permanent sapient residents…

Elweré is a robust and successful trader in the Thousand Worlds marketplace, importing large quantities
of electronics gear, medicines, plastics, luxury foodstuffs… artwork, and building materials—the latter
due to political considerations as opposed to lack of resources, in view of the great quantity of untapped
ore deposits… Simply, the Elwereans prefer to have as small a local manufacturing base as is possible,
with most building done by work-contracted nonresidents. They can afford to indulge this preference…

While there is some export of local silver… the Orogan economy is supported by the export of valda oil,
the product of the beans of the valda plant (Xenocamellia neuvo valda). Treated valda oil is a superb
local and topical anesthetic for humans, preventing free (pain) nerve endings from activating; valda oil has
no known deleterious side effect.

Attempts to grow the valda plant offworld have been invariably unsuccessful, because of the plant's
para-symbiotic dependence on a large variety of local micro-and macroorganisms… Attempts to
manufacture valda oil via recombinant technologies have proved financially uncompetitive with the natural
product…

Due to the characteristic desire of the Elwereans for privacy in virtually all matters, Oroga's trade surplus
is not generally known, but is believed to be in excess of one billion Thousand Worlds Credit Units per
Earth year, perhaps greatly so.

Careful investment of the trade surplus by the Cortes Generale, the Elwerean parliament, may add
significantly to that sum…

CHAPTER ONE:
"We have to…"




"Anything, David?" Little Marie looked up at me, shuffling her bare feet on the sand. Idly, she picked up
a small pebble with her toes, then flipped it waist-high, catching it in a chubby hand.

Marie was better at most manipulations than I was. Put it down to inborn talent; I'd had ten more years
to work on my skills. One-Hand said that the difference between the two of us was a strong point in
favor of heredity over environment.

Whatever that meant. I guess he was talking about my Elwerie father. He didn't know who my mother
was. Some lower, of course. We didn't know who either of Marie's parents were, except that they must
have been lowers, too.

She let the pebble drop to the ground. "Did you get anything at all?"

I shrugged. "Just a little. Too damn little." I patted my tunic just above the waist, where I'd stashed the
purse I'd lifted off the tipsy Randian trader coming out of Alfreda's House of Pleasures. "I got a few
pesos, a ten-credit tweecie chit."