JК
The Colour of Magic :: Пратчетт Терри
Страница: 13 из 150Broadman waited impatiently, ill at ease in a room made noisome by vats and bubbling beakers and lined with shelvescontaining shadowy shapes suggestive of skulls and stuffed impossibilities.
“Well?” he demanded.
“One cannot hurry these things,” said the old alchemist peevishly. “Assaying takes time. Ah.” He prodded the saucer, where the coin now lay in a swirl of green colour. He made some calculations on a scrap of parchment.
“Exceptionally interesting,” he said at last.
“Is it genuine?”
The old man pursed his lips. “it depends on how you define the term,” he said. “if you mean: is this coin the same as, say, a fifty-dollar piece, then the answer is no.”
“I knew” it,” screamed the innkeeper, and started towards the door.
“I’m not sure that I’m making myself clear,” said the alchemist. Broadman turned round angrily.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you see, what with one thing and another our coinage has been somewhat watered, over the years. The gold content of the average coin is barely four parts in twelve, the balance being made up of silver, copper—”
“What of it?”
“I said this coin isn’t like ours. It is pure gold.”
After Broadman had left, at a run, the alchemist spent some time staring at the ceiling. Then he drew out a very small piece of thin parchment, rummaged for a pen amongst the debris on his workbench, and wrote a very short, small, message. Then he went over to his cages of white doves, black cockerels and other laboratory animals. From one cage he removed a glossy coated rat, rolled the parchment into the phial attached to a hind leg, and let the animal go.
It sniffed around the floor for a moment, then disappeared down a hole in the far wall. At about this time a hitherto unsuccessful fortune-teller living on the other side of the block chanced to glance into her scrying bowl, gave a small scream and, within the hour, had sold her jewellery, various magical accoutrements, most of her clothes and almost all her other possessions that could not be conveniently carried on the fastest horse she could buy. The fact that later on, when her house collapsed in flames, she herself died in a freak landslide in the Morpork Mountains, proves that Death, too, has a sense of humour.
Also at about the same moment as the homing rat disappeared into the maze of runs under the city, scurrying along in faultless obedience to an ancient instinct, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork picked up the letters delivered that morning by albatross. He looked pensively at the topmost one again, and summoned his chief of spies.
“Well?” he demanded.
“One cannot hurry these things,” said the old alchemist peevishly. “Assaying takes time. Ah.” He prodded the saucer, where the coin now lay in a swirl of green colour. He made some calculations on a scrap of parchment.
“Exceptionally interesting,” he said at last.
“Is it genuine?”
The old man pursed his lips. “it depends on how you define the term,” he said. “if you mean: is this coin the same as, say, a fifty-dollar piece, then the answer is no.”
“I knew” it,” screamed the innkeeper, and started towards the door.
“I’m not sure that I’m making myself clear,” said the alchemist. Broadman turned round angrily.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you see, what with one thing and another our coinage has been somewhat watered, over the years. The gold content of the average coin is barely four parts in twelve, the balance being made up of silver, copper—”
“What of it?”
“I said this coin isn’t like ours. It is pure gold.”
After Broadman had left, at a run, the alchemist spent some time staring at the ceiling. Then he drew out a very small piece of thin parchment, rummaged for a pen amongst the debris on his workbench, and wrote a very short, small, message. Then he went over to his cages of white doves, black cockerels and other laboratory animals. From one cage he removed a glossy coated rat, rolled the parchment into the phial attached to a hind leg, and let the animal go.
It sniffed around the floor for a moment, then disappeared down a hole in the far wall. At about this time a hitherto unsuccessful fortune-teller living on the other side of the block chanced to glance into her scrying bowl, gave a small scream and, within the hour, had sold her jewellery, various magical accoutrements, most of her clothes and almost all her other possessions that could not be conveniently carried on the fastest horse she could buy. The fact that later on, when her house collapsed in flames, she herself died in a freak landslide in the Morpork Mountains, proves that Death, too, has a sense of humour.
Also at about the same moment as the homing rat disappeared into the maze of runs under the city, scurrying along in faultless obedience to an ancient instinct, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork picked up the letters delivered that morning by albatross. He looked pensively at the topmost one again, and summoned his chief of spies.