Читать онлайн «Zenya»

She was tall, with a mass of golden hair raised and crested in an aureole above her head. Thick strands ran from her temples, cut and shaped into upcurving points which accentuated the high bones and slight concavity of her cheeks. Her jaw was round, with a determined hardness, and her lips were full, the lower pouting in betraying sensuosity. Her eyes were deep-set, glowing amber, wide-spaced beneath arching brows, their upward slant giving her the appearance of a watchful cat.

She had, Dumarest realized, been studying him with unusual interest.

Slowly he turned the page of the ancient volume lying before him on the reading desk, not looking at the crabbed text beneath its transparent coating, but concentrating on the girl.

She wore a dress of luminous gold, rich fabric falling from throat to knee, cinctured at the waist, and tight against the contours of her body. Her arms were bare, coiled bracelets in the design of serpents rising from wrists to elbows, gems bright against the precious metal. Her fingers were long, tapering, devoid of rings, the nails painted to match her dress. Her skin was a lustrous bronze.

She was young, obviously wealthy, and completely out of place. Such a woman would not haunt the musty confines of the Archives of Paiyar. Her type would be found at the stadium, at fashion shows, at parties, at the auctions where debtors were sold into bondage, at the market where merchants offered jewels and rare fabrics, perfumes from a dozen worlds, unguents, and titivating lotions. Not even the lowest of courtesans would waste her time in such a place.

Dumarest turned another page. The volume was the log of some old vessel, boring in its listing of minutiae, devoid of the information he sought. He closed it, added it to a pile of others, and took the entire heap to a desk where a woman checked them against a card.

Smiling, she said, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"No. "

"I'm sorry.

"Thank you, but no. " Dumarest returned the smile. "What I am looking for is something much earlier. A log made at the time when navigational tables were not as they are now. Or a set of tables as used before the present system became established. Apparently you have nothing like that. "

"No," she admitted reluctantly, "we haven't. But would such tables exist? I know little about spacial navigation, but surely the tables used now are the same as they have always been?"

"Perhaps, but I was hoping…" Dumarest broke off, shrugging. "Well, it doesn't matter. It was a thin hope at best. "

But one which had to be investigated. Old logs read and records searched, as he had done before on too many worlds. Books, microfilms, all examined and crosschecked, to be finally discarded as valueless to his search. And yet, somewhere, had to be the answer.