Anderson, Poul - The Sky People

VIP免费

2024-12-24 0 0 138.61KB 71 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

ocean gleamed, its far edge dissolved into purple and a few stars.

Loklann sunna Holber leaned over the gallery rail of his flagship

and pointed a telescope at the city. It sprang to view as a huddle of walls,

flat roofs, and square watchtowers. The cathedral spires were tinted rose

by a hidden sun. No barrage balloons were up. It must be true what rumor

said, that the Perio had abandoned its outlying provinces to their fate. So

the portable wealth of Meyco would have flowed into S' Anton, for

safekeeping-which meant that the place was well worth a raid. Loklann

grinned.

Robra sunna Stam, the Buffalo's mate, spoke. "Best we come

down to about two thousand," he suggested. "Just to be sure the men

aren't blown sideways, to the wrong side of the town walls."

"Aye." The skipper nodded his helmeted head. "Two thousand, so

be it."

Their voices seemed oddly loud up here, where only the wind and a

creak of rigging had broken silence. The sky around the royers was dusky

immensity, tinged red gold in the east. Dew lay on the gallery deck. But

unbelievably white across the last western darkness.

"Hullo, there," said Loklann. He had been studying the harbor

through his telescope. "Something new. What could it be?"

He offered the tube to Robra, who held it to his remaining eye.

Within the glass circle lay a stone dock and warehouses, centuries old,

from the days of the Perio's greatness. Less than a fourth of their capacity

was used now. The normal clutter of wretched little fishing craft, a single

coasting schooner. . . and yes, by Oktai the Stormbringer, a monster thing,

bigger than a whale, seven masts that were impossibly tall!

"I don't know." The mate lowered the telescope. "A foreigner? But

where from? Not in all this continent-"

"I never saw any arrangement like that," said Loklann. "Square

sails on the topmasts, fore-and-aft below." He stroked his short beard. It

burned like spun copper in the morning light; he was one of the fairhaired

blue-eyed men, rare even among the Sky People and unheard of

elsewhere. "Of course," he said, "we're no experts on water craft. We only

see them in passing." A not unamiable contempt rode his words: sailors

visited-in bygone days aircraft were still too primitive and the Perio too

strong. Thus Loklann must scan the city from far above, through drifting

white vapors, and make his plan on the spot. Nor could it be very

complicated, for he had only signal flags and a barrel-chested hollerer with

a megaphone to pass orders to the other vessels.

"That big plaza in front of the temple," he murmured. "Our

contingent will land there. Let the Stormcloud men tackle that big building

east of it. . . see. . . it looks like a chief's dwelling. Over there, along the

north wall, typical barracks and parade ground-Coyote can deal with the

soldiers. Let the Witch of Heaven men land on the docks, seize the

seaward gun emplacements and that strange vessel, then join the attack

on the garrison. Fire Elk's crew should land inside the east city gate and

send a detachment to the south gate, to bottle in the civilian population.

Having occupied the plaza, I'll send reinforcements wherever they're

needed. All clear?"

He snapped down his goggles. Some of the big men crowding

about him wore chain armor, but he preferred a cuirass of harden leather,

Mong style; it was nearly as strong and a lot lighter. He was armed with a

pistol, but had more faith in his battle ax. An archer could shoot almost as

be reborn as a Sky Man.

"Let's go!" he said.

He sprang up on a gallery rail and over. For a moment the world

pinwheeled, now the city was on top and now again his Buffalo streaked

past. Then he pulled the ripcord and his harness slammed him to

steadiness. Around him it bloomed with scarlet parachutes. He gauged the

wind and tugged a line, guiding himself down.

Don Miwel Carabán, calde of S' AntOn d' Inio, arranged a lavish

feast for his Maurai guests. It was not only that this was a historic occasion,

which might even mark a turning point in the long decline. (Don Miwel,

being that rare combination, a practical man who could read, knew that the

withdrawal of Perio troops to Brasil twenty years ago was not a "temporary

adjustment." They would never come back. The outer provinces were on

their own.) But the strangers must be convinced that they had found a

nation rich, strong, and basically civilized: that it was worthwhile visiting the

Meycan coasts to trade, ultimately to make alliance against the northern

savages.

ham, olives, fruits, wines, nuts, coffee, which last the Sea People were

unfamiliar with and didn't much care for, et cetera. Entertainment followed-

music, jugglers, a fencing exhibition by some of the young nobles.

At this point the surgeon of the Dolphin, who was rather drunk,

offered to show an Island dance. Muscular beneath tattoos, his brown form

went through a series of contortions which pursed the lips of the dignified

Dons. Miwel himself remarked, "It reminds me somewhat of our peons'

fertility rites," with a strained courtesy that suggested to Captain Ruori

Rangi Lohannaso that peons had an altogether different and not very nice

culture.

The surgeon threw back his queue and grinned. "Now let's bring

the ship's wahines ashore to give them a real hula," he said in Maurai-

Ingliss.

"No," answered Ruori. "I feaf we may have shocked them already.

The proverb goes, 'When in the Solmon Islands, darken your skin.'"

"I don't think they know how to have any fun," complained the

doctor.

rebuke as you could give a man whom you didn't intend to fight. He

softened his tone to take out the worst sting, but the doctor had to shut up.

Which he did, mumbling an apology and retiring with his blushes to a dark

corner beneath faded murals.

Ruori turned back to his host. "I beg your pardon, S'flor," he said,

using the local tongue. "My men's command of Spaflol is even less than my

own."

"Of course." Don Miwel's lean black-cald form made a stiff little

bow. It brought his sword up, ludicrously like a tail. Ruori heard a

smothered snort of laughter from one of his officers. And yet, thought the

captain, were long trousers and ruffled shirt any worse than sarong,

sandals, and clan tattoos? Different customs, no more. You had to sail the

Maurai Federation, from Awaii to his own N'Zealann and west to Mlaya,

before you appreciated how big this planet was and how much of it a

mystery.

"You speak our language most excellently, S'ñor," said Doflita

Tresa Carabán. She smiled. "Perhaps better than we, since you studied

Meycans-the nobles, at least- thought a girl should be reserved solely for

the husband they eventually picked for her. He would have liked her to

swap her pearls and silver for a lei and go out in a ship's canoe, just the

two of them, to watch the sunrise and make love.

However-

"In such company," he murmured, "I am stimulated to learn

the modern language as fast as possible."

She refrained from coquetting with her fan, a local habit the Sea

People found alternately hilarious and irritating. But her lashes fluttered.

They were very long, and her eyes, he saw, were goldflecked green. "You

are learning cab'llero manners just as fast, S'nor," she said.

"Do not call our language 'modem', I pray you," interrupted a

scholarly looking man in a long robe. Ruori recognized Bispo Don Carlos

Ermosillo, a high priest of that Esu Canto who seemed cognate with the

Maurai Lesu Haristi. "Not modern, but corrupt. I too have studied old books,

printed before the War of Judgment. Our ancestors spoke the true Spaflol.

Our version of it is as distorted as our present-day society." He sighed. "But

Bispo bitterly. "It unified a large area, gave law and order for a while, but

what did it create that was new? Its course was the same sorry tale as a

thousand kingdoms before, and therefore the same judgment has fallen on

it."

Doflita Tresa crossed herself. Even Ruori, who held a degree in

engineering as well as navigation, was shocked. "Not atomics?" he

exclaimed.

"What? Oh. The old weapons, which destroyed the old world. No,

of course not." Don Carlos shook his head. "But in our more limited way,

we have been as stupid and sinful as the legendary forefathers, and the

results have been parallel. You may call it human greed or el Dio's

punishment as you will; I think the two mean much the same thing."

Ruori looked closely at the priest. "I should like to speak with you

further, S'nor," he said, hoping it was the right title. "Men who know history,

rather than myth, are rare these days."

"By all means," said Don Carlos. "I should be honored."

quite like those of the Maurai, others wholly unfamiliar. The scale itself was

different. . . they had something like it in Stralia, but- A hand fell on Ruori's

arm. He looked down at Tresa. "Since you do not ask me to dance," she

said, "may I be so immodest as to ask you?"

"What does 'immodest' mean?" he inquired.

She blushed and tried to explain, without success. Ruori decided it

was another local concept which the Sea People lacked. By that time the

Meycan girls and their cavaliers were out on the ballroom floor. He studied

them for a moment. "The motions are unknown to me," he said, "but I think

I could soon learn."

She slipped into his arms. It was a pleasant contact, even though

nothing would come of it. "You do very well," she said after a minute. "Are

all your folk so graceful?"

Only later did he realize it was a compliment for which he should

have thanked her; being an Islander, he took it at face value as a question

and replied, "Most of us spend a great deal of time on the water. A sense of

balance and rhythm must be developed or one is likely to fall into the sea."

his sarong was the finest batik, and he had added thereto a fringed shirt.

His knife, without which a Maurai felt obscenely helpless, was in contrast:

old, shabby until you saw the blade, a tool.

"I must see this god 5' Osd," he said. "Will you show me? Or no, I

would not have eyes for a mere statue."

"How long will you stay?" she asked.

"As long as we can. We are supposed to explore the whole Meycan

coast. Hitherto the only Maurai contact with the Menken continent has been

one voyage from Awaii to Calforni. They found desert and a few savages.

We have heard from Okkaidan traders that there are forests still further

north, where yellow and white men strive against each other. But what lies

south of Calforni was unknown to us until this expedition was sent out.

Perhaps you can tell us what to expect in Su-Merika."

"Little enough by now," she sighed, "even in Brasil."

"Ah, but lovely roses bloom, in Meyco."

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

oceangleamed,itsfaredgedissolvedintopurpleandafewstars.LoklannsunnaHolberleanedoverthegalleryrailofhisflagshipandpointedatelescopeatthecity.Itsprangtoviewasahuddleofwalls,flatroofs,andsquarewatchtowers.Thecathedralspiresweretintedrosebyahiddensun.Nobarrageballoonswereup.Itmustbetruewhatrumorsaid,tha...

展开>> 收起<<

Anderson, Poul - The Sky People.pdf

共71页,预览15页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Anderson, Poul - The Sky People

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: