"Philip Jose' Farmer. The Green Odyssey (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

oblivious of what was going on. He had power of life and death over them,
but he didn't trust them. He said, "Perhaps it would be better if I
thought about this before making such a drastic oath. Could you meet me
tonight at the Hour of the Wineglass at the House of Equality? And could
you perhaps give me a slight hint of what you have in mind?"

"The answer to both is yes. My proposal has to do with the dried fish that
you carry as cargo to the Estoryans. There is another thing, too, but I
may not even hint at it until I have your oath."

"Very well then. At the agreed hour. Fish, eh? I must be off. Time is
money, you know. Get going boys, full sails."

Green hailed a passing rickshaw and seated himself comfortably in it. As
assistant majordomo he had plenty of money. Moreover, the Duke and Duchess
would have been outraged if he had lowered their prestige by walking
through the city's streets. His vehicle made good time, too, because
everybody recognized his livery: the scarlet and white tricorn hat and the
white sleeveless shirt with the Duke's heraldic arms on its chest-red and
green concentric circles pierced by a black arrow.

The street led always downward, for the city had been built on the
foothills of the mountains. It wandered here and there and gave Green
plenty of time to think.

The trouble was, he thought, that if the two imprisoned men at Estorya
were to die before he got to them he'd still be lost. He had no idea of
how to pilot or navigate a spaceship. He'd been a passenger on a freighter
when it had unaccountably blown up, and he'd been forced to leave the
dying vessel in one of those automatic castaway emergency shells. The
capsule had got him down to the surface of this planet and was, as far as
he knew, still up in the hills where he'd left it. After wandering for a
week and almost starving to death he'd been picked up by some peasants.
They had turned him in to the soldiers of a nearby garrison, thinking he
must be a runaway slave on whom they'd collect a reward. Taken to the
capital city of Quotz, Green had almost been freed because there was no
record of his being anybody's property. But his tallness, blondness and
inability to speak the local language had convinced his captors that he
must have wandered down from some far northern country. Therefore if he
wasn't a slave he should be.

Presto, changeo! He was. And he'd put in six months in a quarry and a year
as a dock worker. Then the Duchess had chanced to see him on the streets
as she rode by, and he'd been transferred to the castle.

The streets were alive with the short, dark, stocky natives and the
taller, lighter-complexioned slaves. The former wore their turbans of
various colors, indicating their status and trade. The latter wore their
three-cornered hats. Occasionally a priest in his high conical hat,
hexagonal spectacles and goatee rode by. Wagons and rickshaws drawn by