Young Doctor Eszterhazy
- Автор: Дэвидсон Аврам Джеймс
- Серия: Dr. Eszterhazy #10
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Детективная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Young Doctor Eszterhazy». Краткое содержание книги:
He had not gone very far, nor did he have any clear idea where he was going, when a rather roughly-dressed man separated himself from a knot of workingmen doing no particular work, and approached. That this fellow bore a very close likeness to the beggarman blind and mute and deaf to whom he had given alms not long ago did not occur to him; he did not remember having given alms. And the man came very close and said, “Hey, meester, pssst! You like see Turkish Gypsy dancing-girl?”
Later: “Fiii! Eeyoo! This stuff stinks,” said the “beggarman,” looking around.
“Otto of roses is one thing,” said Pishto-the-Avar. “And chloroform’s another.”
The Skraeling, when he hunts the walrus on the ice, attempts to convince the walrus that he, the Skraeling, is another walrus, pulling himself along on his elbows as he lies full-length stretched-out. To employ this same tactic in the streets of a large city requires some change of details, but the principle remained sufficiently the same so that Eeiiuullaalaa (a.k.a. “Ole Skraelandi,” “Ole Frori”) was not intercepted. He could not read what was painted on the side of the wagon into which his Sovereign had been swiftly thrust, but his nose told him it was strongly associated with fish ... and not stockfish, either ... it went off as rapidly as a fish-wagon could possibly go without arousing suspicion. He walked after it until it turned a comer; then he ran, loped, or trotted; to one who had chased reindeer, a fishwagon was nothing. When he got in sight of it again, he walked again; if it was not in sight he followed its trail of scent until it came in sight. Those who saw and noticed (not the same thing at all) perhaps docketed him as a quarter-cast Tartar in a slightly odd cap; but this was no reason for stopping him. And, in fact, no one did stop him.
He was not even thinking of the possibility that he might eventually become winded when he saw a gate open in a high wall, the wagon roll and rattle inside, the gate close. Nearby to where he stopped was a tree, a mulberry, a rather old and rather tall one. In Skraeland grew no mulberry trees, for in Skraeland grew few trees at all, but the Skrae shamans knew about trees nonetheless, and one of the things they said about them was, “Where there are no crags, eagles dwell in trees.” From within the walls wherein his unfortunate Ruler was now captive came, subdued by distance, some shrill whistles; these (the Brigand Boustremovitch was giving orders to his henchmen) — plus that just-remembered saying, reminded him of what he had to do. The toom-toom he had, as always, with him; but the toom-toom he had not now here with him: it was within its flat case, packed within his box at the hotel. But he had the other thing-of-power with him, and so now he thrust his hand into his bosom and he drew it out. It was wrapped in the skin of an entirely-black ermine tail, worn smooth and darkened by age; the thing-of-power had not been new when the first Court Shaman brought it with him first to Frorigarth and then to S’Brigidsgarth, and no one now remembered the name of the (pre-missionary, entirely pagan) shaman who fashioned it from the wing-bone of the large male eagle he had captured and — after a well-sung apology — killed. Ole chanted the Beginning Chant as the Beginning Chant was always sung.
Then he placed the whistle in his mouth, there as high in the old tree as it was prudent to climb, and began, in quick, sharp bursts, to blow it.
He did not know to whom he was whistling: to whom, in the realm below, his shrill cry for help was addressed; mainly he had in mind the spirits of the upper and the lower air. Partly — though not with much hope — he thought that perhaps there might be shamans here in this distant city or not very far from it... if not precisely fellow shamans then at least a one or two with some similar knowledge and who, recognizing the burden of his shrill cry, could come — somehow — to his aid. And besides: what else had he to do? And what else could he do?
Having left the Bureau of Parks, Forests, and Lands, Emma Katterina and her suite (popularly denominated as “three witches and a priest”) headed outward for the Office of the Privy Purse, there to collect yet another batch of “pensions”; some of them in her own right, and some of them as widow of the very long-late Margrave of the Ister, Ignats Louis’s elder half-brother. It had been a tangled Succession-to-the-Throne; and, rather than tangle it further still, the Royal and Imperial Family had preferred to pay. And pay. And pay. It did not, as such things were recokoned, pay much; but — who had known the woman would live so long? — if was still paying! The five eventually reached the Five Points, where the major routes through the city disembogued, were obliged to detour along the left side of the road because navvies laying gas-pipes had deeply trenched the east side. Emma Katterina had been waddling wearilessly along; suddenly she stopped, an odd expression on her face. The Baroness Bix and Bix, one of her Ladies in Waiting, asked, a trifle anxiously, “What, The Mamma?”
The Titular Queen of Carinthia was at no loss. “What, you can’t hear? What, your ears are stopped with wax and dirt and infidelity? The Satan is fifing!” And, in a sudden second of silence, it seemed to them that, lo! the Satan was fifing! Had they, the old woman and her chaplain and her three handmatrons, at that moment found themselves in some sort of suddenly constructed sound-trap, a ... as it were . . . nexus, where the high thin notes which came from the shaman’s eagle’s wing whistle were being driven down and along by currents of wind and air and flowed, however briefly, there and thither . . . and thither and there only? However briefly?
Without more to-do, Emma Katerina knelt on the road-bed and, taking out her rosary, began to pray. And so, without more to-do, her Chaplain and her Ladies knelt on the roadbed and, taking out their rosaries, began to pray. Six fish-wives who had been to the Great Market to replenish their wares, on seeing this, set down their baskets and, ceasing to cry, “Fresh! Fresh! A penny off a penny off!” knelt on the roadbed and, taking out their rosaries, began to pray. Seven superannuated housewives who had been on their way to the nearby Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius, knelt on the roadbed, took out their rosaries and began to pray. Eight coal-heavers coming along asked themselves what was going on here, and, reminding one another that it was Lent, knelt (rather rustily) upon the roadbed, and, after patting their pockets (“Got it here some where for sure — ah! Knew I’d got it!”), took out their rosaries and began to pray. The new-dug ditch was too broad to be leaped, and inside of three minutes the entire Five Points had become impassable. And while the constantly increasing throng knelt reciting endless rosaries (or, in the case of those of Other Denominations, the doxologies in Old High Hyperborean, Ancient Avar, Medieval Slovatchko, Reformed Romanou, and other liturgical languages of the polyglot Empire), the staff of SS. Cyril and Methodius ordered the churchbells to be rung — thus alerted, so did those of the not-quite-so- nearby Churches of St. Gleb, St. Boris, St. Vladimir, Holy Affliction, St. Nicholas of Myra, St. Peter in Chains, St. Catherine the Martyr, SS. Cosmo and Damian Healing the Sick Without Charge... the sounds of their bells spread like ripples. While all this was going on, steam-trams, horse-cars, omnibuses, wagons, private carriages, pedestrians, all piled up behind each other, clogging the streets as far as the Swing Bridge, and farther enough to prevent it from swinging, thus tying up the traffic on the Little Ister and even the Ister, and thus — also — preventing the Late Lunchtime Freight from passing across Stanislavs Street, thus tying up rail traffic as far away as Budapest and Belgrade. . . .