"Tom Kratman - A Desert Called Peace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kratman Tom)

"Some years ago the actions of your leader and your movement robbed me of my wife and
children," the Jinn announced. He turned to the chief mullah. "What does Surah Eighty-one say, O' man
of God?" he asked.
The mullah recited aloud, loud enough for the microphone to pick up so that the prisoners could
hear, "When the infant girl, buried alive, is asked for what crime she was slain . . . "
"What does it mean?"
"It means, sayidi, when Allah asks who murdered her, for no infant girl can be guilty of a crime."
"Does Allah approve of burying infant girls alive, then?"
"He does not. Surah Eighty-one, the Cessations, is concerned with the end of time, Judgment Day,
and the punishment of the wicked. God will punish the murderers of infant girls."
The Jinn's face twitched in the smallest of smiles. "Ah, I see. What does the Holy Koran say about
those who bring disorder to the world?
"It says, O' Jinn, in Surah Five, the Table, that those who fight against God or his Apostle, bringing
disorder to the world, should be killed, or have the hands and feet cut off on opposite sides, or be exiled,
or be crucified."
"I see," said the uniformed man. "Do those who kill infant girls fight against God? Have these men
brought disorder to the world?"
"They have. They do," answered the mullah, "for this is expressly forbidden under Islam."
The Jinn turned back to his captives. "I loved my family, even as тАУ one supposes тАУ you love your
own. I swore, when they were murdered, to avenge myself on all who had contributed, even passively, to
my loss. Thus you shall die. I am, though, as Mullah Hassim told you, very solicitous of your fate in the
hereafter. So before you die, you will be thoroughly Christianized."
Then the Jinn smiled, nastily, and turned to his subadar.
"Crucify them."

Part I
Chapter One
To reap the harvest of perpetual peace . . .
тАФWilliam Shakespeare, King Richard III
UEPF Spirit of Peace , Earth Date 25 November, 2510
Klaxons sounded piercingly throughout the ship as black-uniformed crewmen and women hurried
through the cramped metal corridors to this or that necessary duty. Despite the soft, gripping soles of the
crew's footwear, needed in the reduced gravity aboard ship, their feet made a rumbling sound that
passed through the air and hull. Not a few of the crew's pale faces looked mildly nauseous. Transition
through the rift, jumping thousands of light years in an instant, affected some people like that. Others it
seemed not to bother. Nor was there any predicting in advance; the only way to find out was to endure
the transition.
A voice followed the klaxons, emanating from someone on the ship's bridge. "All hands, all hands,
secure from transition. Rotating ship in five minutes. Sail Crew, stand by to deploy the sail for braking.
Captain to the Admiral's quarters."
High-Admiral Martin Robinson, United Earth Peace Fleet, was one of those affected badly by the
passage. He'd hoped it would not prove so and had his hopes dashed moments after the bridge had
announced, "Transition in . . . "
Robinson's looks belied his age. Despite being two centuries old, his face remained unlined, his
back unstooped, his blue-gray eyes clear and bright. His heart and lungs and all the other organs worked
as if they inhabited a twenty-one year old body and were no older than that themselves. Even his hair
was blond, without a trace of silver or gray, and his hairline unreceded.
Anti-Decay Accelerating Factor, or ADAF, drugs had been available, at least to Earth's elite, for
centuries. As a Class One, the highest of Earth's six castes, the High Admiral was very elite indeed.
Yet neither the apparent age nor the real age had helped one whit to spare Robinson the misery of