"Paul McAuley - Recording Angel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

Mr Naryan drops a handful of the roasted peanuts he carries for the purpose into the mendicant's bowl,
and walks on. He walks a long way before he realises that a crowd has gathered at the end of the long
plaza, where the steps end and, with a sudden jog, the docks begin. Hundreds of machines swarm in
the darkening air, and behind this shuttling weave a line of magistrates stand shoulder to shoulder,
flipping their quirts back and forth as if to drive off flies. Metal tags braided into the tassels of the
quirts wink and flicker; the magistrates' flared red cloaks seem inflamed in the last light of the sun.

The people make a rising and falling hum, the sound of discontent. They are looking upriver. Mr
Naryan, with a catch in his heart, realises what they must be looking at.

It is a speck of light on the horizon, where the broad ribbon of the river and the broad ribbon of the
land narrow to a single point. It is the lighter towing Angel's ship, at the end of its long journey to the
desert city where she has taken refuge, and caught Mr Naryan in the net of her tale.




Mr Naryan first heard about Angel from Dreen, Sensch's Commissioner; in fact, Dreen paid a visit to
Mr Naryan's house to convey the news in person. His passage through the narrow streets of the quarter
was the focus of a swelling congregation which kept a space two paces wide around him as he ambled
towards the house where Mr Naryan had his apartment.

Dreen was a lively but tormented fellow who was paying off a debt of conscience by taking the more
or less ceremonial position of Commissioner in this remote city which his ancestors had long ago
abandoned. Slight and agile, his head clean-shaven except for a fringe of polychrome hair that framed
his parchment face, he looked like a lily blossom swirling on the Great River's current as he made his
way through the excited crowd. A pair of magistrates preceded him and a remote followed, a mirror-
coloured seed that seemed to move through the air in brief rapid pulses like a squeezed watermelon
pip. A swarm of lesser machines spun above the packed heads of the crowd. Machines did not entirely
trust the citizens, with good reason. Change Wars raged up and down the length of Confluence as, one
by one, the ten thousand races of the Shaped fell from innocence.

Mr Naryan, alerted by the clamour, was already standing on his balcony when Dreen reached the
house. Scrupulously polite, his voice amplified through a little machine that fluttered before his lips,
Dreen enquired if he might come up. The crowd fell silent as he spoke, so that his last words echoed
eerily up and down the narrow street. When Mr Naryan said mildly that the Commissioner was of
course always welcome, Dreen made an elaborate genuflection and scrambled straight up the fretted
carvings which decorated the front of the apartment house. He vaulted the wrought iron rail and
perched in the ironwood chair that Mr Naryan usually took when he was tutoring a pupil.

While Mr Naryan lowered his corpulent bulk onto the stool that was the only other piece of furniture
on the little balcony, Dreen said cheerfully that he had not walked so far for more than a year. He
accepted the tea and sweetmeats that Mr Naryan's wife, terrified by his presence, offered, and added,

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Mcauley,%20Paul%20J%20-%20Recording%20Angel.htm (2 of 27)8-12-2006 23:46:56
Recording Angel - a novelette by Paul J McAuley

"It really would be more convenient if you took quarters appropriate to your status."

As Commissioner, Dreen had use of the vast palace of intricately carved pink sandstone that