"George Alec Effinger - Marid 3 - The Exile Kiss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

reception we'd be kidnapped and driven into exile. I preferred to believe that Shaykh Mahali knew nothing of what was
happening to us now.
"Here are your prisoners, Sergeant," Hajjar said to the fat-assed local cop.
The sergeant nodded. He looked us over and frowned. He wore a nameplate that told me his name was al-Bishah.
He had a gigantic belly that was pushing its way to freedom from between the buttons of his sweat-stained shirt.
There were four or five days of black stubble on his face, and his teeth were broken and stained dark brown. His
eyelids drooped, and at first I thought it was because he'd been awakened in the middle of the night; but his clothes
smelled strongly of hashish, and I knew that this cop passed the lonely nights on duty with his nor/Hah.
"Lemme guess," said the sergeant. "The young guy pulled the trigger, and this raggedy-looking old fool in the red
tarboosh is the brains of the operation." He threw his head back and roared with laughter. It must have been the
hashish, because not even Hajjar cracked a smile.
"Pretty much," said the lieutenant. "They're all yours now." Hajjar turned to me. "One last thing before we say
good-bye forever, Audran. Know what the first thing is I'm gonna do tomorrow?"
His grin was about the most vicious and ugly one I'd ever seen. "No, what?" I said.
"I'm gonna close down that club of yours. And you know what's the second thing?" He waited, but I refused to
play along. "Okay, I'll tell you. I'm gonna bust your Yasmin for prostitution, and when I got her in my special,
deep-down hole, I'm gonna see what she's got that you like so much."
I was very proud of myself. A year or two ago, I'd have smashed his teeth in, goon or no goon. I was more mature
now, so I just stood there, looking impassively into his wild eyes. I repeated this to myself: the next time you see this
man, you will kill him. The next time you see this man, you will kill him. That kept me from doing anything stupid while
I had two weapons trained on me.
"Dream abouMt, Audran!" Hajjar shouted, as he and the qadi climbed back up the gangway. I didn't even turn to
watch him.
"You were wise, my nephew," said Friedlander Bey. I looked at him, and I could tell from his expression that he
had been favorably impressed by my behavior.
"I've learned much from you, my grandfather," I said. That seemed to please him, too.
"Aw right," said the local sergeant, "come on. Don't wanna be out here when they get that sucker movin'." He
jerked the barrel of his rifle in the direction of the dark building, and Papa and I preceded him across the runway.
It was pitch black inside, but Sergeant al-Bishah didn't turn on any lights. "Just follow the wall," he said. I felt my
way along a narrow corridor until it turned a corner. There was a small office there with a battered desk, a phone, a
mechanical fan, and a small, beat-up holo sys-tem. There was a chair behind the desk, and the sergeant dropped
heavily_into it. There was another chair in a cor-ner, and I let Papa have it. I stood leaning against a filthy plasterboard
wall.
"Now," said the cop, "we come to the matter of what I do with you. You're in Najran now, not some flea-bitten
village where you got influence. You're nobody in Najran, but I'm somebody. We gonna see what you can do for me,
and if you can't do nothin', you gonna go to jail."
"How much money do you have, my nephew?" Papa asked me.
"Not much." I hadn't brought a great deal with me, because I didn't think I'd need it at the amir's house. I usually
carried my money divided between the pockets in my gallebeya, just for situations like this. I counted what I had in
the left pocket; it came to a little over a hundred and eighty kiam. I wasn't about to let the dog of a ser-geant know I
had more in the other pocket.
"Ain't even real money, is it?" complained al-Bishah. He shoved it all into his desk drawer anyway. "What about
the old guy?"
"I have no money at all," said Papa.
"Now, that's too bad." The sergeant used a lighter to fire up the hashish in his narjilah. He leaned over and took
the mouthpiece between his teeth. I could hear the burbling of the water pipe and smell the tang of the black hashish.
He exhaled the smoke and smiled. "You can pick your cells, I got two. Or you got somethin' else I might want?"
I thought of my ceremonial dagger. "How about this?" I said, laying it in front of him on the desk.
He shook his head. "Cash," he said, shoving the dag-ger back toward me. I thought he'd made a bad mistake,/
because the dagger had a lot of gold and jewels stuck on it. Maybe he didn't have anywhere to fence an item like that.