"Ann Crispin "Han Solo. Rebel Dawn"" - читать интересную книгу автора

Outside, something clanged against the Falcon's new armor-plating. "Hey!" Hah yelled, jumping up and el-bowing his hairy friend out of the way, "watch it, that's my hull!"
Hitting the "open ramp" release, Hah raced down the ramp, then stopped in wonder. When he'd first flown into the "cave" it had seemed a tight ft, but now he real-ized the place was so big it had echoes.
Back at the entrance, a hydraulic lift whined as it raised a huge "curtain" of some kind of camouflage net over the entrance. Teams of Wookiees were busily draping the Falcon in more netting.
Chewie came up behind him, and growled a soft apology for not warning his friend better about what was going to happen. "Let me guess," Han said, survey-ing the "nets." "Those things contain either jamming nodes or they send out some kind of camouflage fre-quency, so the Imps can't trace us here."
Chewbacca confirmed Han's guess. Local Wookiees used this landing site to receive smuggled goods, and they knew the drill.
"Wow," Jarik muttered. The young man was staring around the "cave" in openmouthed wonder as the lights came up. The inside of the "cave" was a well-stocked, completely functional docking site and repair facility. "Wow! This is something!"
Han still couldn't believe they were standing inside a tree. No, not a tree, but a tree branch. If one branch of a wroshyr was this big, the idea of the whole tree was mind-boggling. He shook his head. "I gotta admit, Chewie, your people have got a slick operation here." After carefully locking the Falcon, Han and Jarik fol-lowed Chewie out toward the front of the "cave." There they were introduced to a crowd of Wookiees. Han had some trouble following the conversation, because he wasn't used to hearing seven Wookiees talking rapidly ъ all at the same time. Chewbacca was howled at, hugged, thumped, shaken, thumped some more and generally exclaimed over with great joy.
When Chewie introduced Han as his "honor brother" to whom he owed a life debt for freeing him from slavery, Han in turn was in grave danger of being similarly thumped, shaken, etc., but, thankfully, Chew-bacca intervened and provided more conventional in-troductions. Not all of the Wookiees understood Basic, so a lot of translating was necessary.
Three of the Wookiees Han met were relatives of Chewiek... the Wookiee with the whorls of auburn hair turned out to be his sister, Kallabow. Jowdrrl, a smaller, chestnut colored female (Han was surprised to note that he could actually see a family resemblance!) was a cousin, and Dryanta, a darker brown male, was another cousin. The other four were members of the Wookiee underground resistance movement, who had come in especially to meet Han and negotiate for his cargo.
Motamba was an older Wookiee, a munitions expert whose blue eyes lit up when Han revealed how many boxes of explosive quarrels he had to sell. Katarra was a young Wookiee, younger than Chewbacca, and she was the underground resistance's leader, as near as Han could tell. The Wookiees listened to her with a great deal of respect. She consulted regularly with her father, Tarkazza, a burly male who was the first Wookiee with black fur Han had ever seen. He had a stripe of silver-colored fur running down his back, which was evidently a family trait, for Katarra had one, too, though her fur was brown and tan.
After several minutes of confusion, Chewbacca roared an order to his friends. Hah caught most of it. Something about, "fetch the quulaars." What are quulaars ? Han wondered.
He soon found out. Two long bag-like pieces of wo-ven fabric-or was it woven hair?--were produced. Chewbacca turned to Hah, and pointed from the Corel-lian to the quulaar. Han stared at his friend, incredulous, trod shook his head. "Get inside? You want me and Jarik to crawl into those things? So you can carry us up the trees? No way, pal! I can climb, just as good as you can."
Chewbacca looked at his friend and shook his head. Then he grabbed Hank arm, and hustled the Corellian over to the entrance to the cave, and, lifting the camou-flage hanging, gestured Hah to step outside, onto the lip of the cave.
Jarik had followed them outside, as had the other Wookiees. The youth was confused, having understood almost nothing of what had been said. "Hah? What do they want?"
"They want us to crawl into these sacks, kid, so they can haul us up the tree trunks until we can catch the lift for Rwookrrorro. I just told Chewie no way, that I can climb just as good ms he can."
Jarik walked over to the lip and cautiously leaned over to look down. Then he walked back to Hah, gave him a long, silent look. Without speaking, he began climbing into his quulaar.
Out of curiosity, Han walked over to look down, too. He'd known it intellectually, of course, but it was one thing to know it with his brain, another to know it in his gut. He was kilometers high in the air. Below him the forest went on... and on... and on ....
The tree .trunks stretched down, past the point where Hank excellent eyesight could distinguish them from each other. Despite ‘all his piloting experience and his outstanding sense of balance, the sight made Han's head swim for a moment. He walked back to Chew-bacca, who was helpfully holding out the quulaar. When Han hesitated, the Wookiee flexed his powerful hands and made his claws pop out. They were very sharp, and, coupled with Chewie's great strength, would enable him to dig deep into a tree trunk when climbing. "I'm gonna regret this ...."Han muttered, and climbed into the sack.
Chewbacca wanted to carry Hah, but his relatives convinced him that, since it had been a long time since he'd done any forest-traversing, it would be better if he had only himself to worry about.
So Motamba carried Jarik, and Tarkazza carried Han, both humans stuffed inside their respective quu-laars. Hah wanted to look out, but Tarkazza was firm, pushing the human's head down into the sack, warning him to keep his arms inside, too, and to stay still, so he wouldn't disturb his carrier's balance.
Inside the quulaar, Han felt the bag sway as Tarkazza walked to the edge of the platform lip. Then, with a grunt and a powerful leap, the Wookiee launched him-self. They were falling, falling!
Hah barely managed to hold back a yell, and he heard Jarik let out a short, bitten-off cry.
Seconds later Tarkazza smacked into a hard surface, clung, then began climbing rapidly upward. Leaves swished against the quulaar. Han had just started to re-lax, when suddenly they leaped again!
The next few minutes, all Han could do was try not to move, and to keep concentrating on not being sick. The sack swung and jerked and spun and slapped against the tree trunks, despite Tarkazza's best efforts. Swing, scramble, climb.
Leap, grip, swing.
Grab, grunt, swing-climb ....
Han finally had to close his eyes, not that he could see much anyway, and just try to hang on. It seemed as though the nightmare journey took hours, but Hah real-ized when he checked his chrono later, that it had taken only about fifteen minutes.
Finally, with a last swing and grunt of effort, the movement stopped, and Hah found himself lying on the ground, still inside the quulaar. When the world around him stopped spinning (which took a moment) the Corellian began clawing his way out of the sack.
Moments later, he was standing, legs braced wide apart for balance, on the great platform where the great, mostly enclosed city of Rwookrrorro was located. It was a massive, flattened ovoid, with homes studding the out-skirts and scattered all over the platform. Branches grew straight up ‘along the avenues, through the material mak-ing up the streets, adding touches of green.
The world steadied around Han, and he drew a deep breath. The city before him was beautiful, in a way that Was hard to describe. Not as pastel as Cloud City, Rwookrrorro had some of the same openness and airi-ness. Perhaps because it was, like Cloud City, so high up?
Some of the buildings were several stories tall, yet they harmonized, somehow, with the treetops. All around them the vivid green topmost branches of the wroshyr trees swayed in the breeze. The sky overhead was blue, with a hint of green. Thick, flattened masses of sparkling white clouds drifted by.
Hearing a strangled gurgle, Hah looked over and saw Jarik, bent over, clutching his middle, obviously in dis-tress. He went over and touched the youth's shoulder. "Hey, kid, you okay?"
Jarik shook his head, then looked as though he'd re-gretted doing that. ‘Tm gonna be okay," he mumbled. "Jus' tryin' not to upchuck .... "
"There's a trick to that," Han said mock-seriously.
"Just don't think about traladon and tuber stew."
Jarik gave Hah a quick, betrayed glance, then, hand over his mouth, bolted for the edge of the platform. The Corellian shrugged, then turned to find Chewie filere. "Poor guy. Hey, Chewie, what a way to travel. Good thing your people brought those sacks along.
What do you usually carry in them? Luggage?"
Chewbacca's lip curled, then he gave a brief, amused translation of the word "quulaar."
Hah bristled. "Baby-sack? You haul Wook babies around in ‘em?"
Chewbacca began to laugh, and the madder his hu-man friend got, the more the Wooldee cracked up. Hah was rescued by a roar from a party of Woollees coming their way from the city. There were at least ten of them, ‘all ages. Hah noted a somewhat stooped, short, graying Wooldee, and just then Chewbacca took off, racing toward the newcomers with roars of joy.
Watching Chewie thump and pound and hug the old Woollee, Hah turned to Kallabow, who, thankfully, understood Basic. "Attichitcuk?" he guessed, naming Chewbacca's father.
Chewbacca's sister confirmed that, yes indeed, that was their father, Attichitcuk, who had talked of nothing else since discovering that his son would soon be home.
"There's someone else that Chewie's looking forward to seeing," Han said. "Mallatobuck. She still live here in Rwookrrorro?"
Kallabow's formidable teeth flashed in a Wooldee grin and she nodded, human-style.
"She married?" Hah asked, dreading the answer. He had some idea of how much that question meant to his best friend.
Kallabows grin widened, as slowly, deliberately, she shook her head, no.
Han grinned back. "Whoo-hoo! That's something to celebrate, I guess!"
Hah felt a touch onhis shoulder, and turned to find Katarra standing there, with yet another male Woollee. To Han's profound astonishment, the tall Wookiee opened his mouth and said, in amazingly understandable Wooldee, [Greetings, Captain Solo. I am Ralrracheen. Please call me Ralrra. We are honored, Hansolo, that you have come to Kashyyyk.]
Han's mouth dropped open with surprise. It had taken him years to learn to understand Woollee speech, and he couldn't pronounce it even ‘after many efforts. And yet this Woollee spoke in a fashion that Han could understand very easily-and could even have ‘repro-duced. "Hey!" Han blurted. "How do you do that?"
[A speech impediment,] the Woollee said. [Unfortu-nate for me when conversing with my own people, but, when humans visit Kashyyyk, it is useful.]