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

scatter amongst any children or mendicants he encountered as he strolled through
the city, the nut roaster said that he'd seen a strange woman only an hour
before -- she'd had no coin, but the nut roaster had given her a bag of shelled
salted nuts all the same.
"Was that the right thing to do, master?" the nut roaster asked. His eyes
glittered anxiously beneath the shelf of his ridged brow.
Mr Naryan, knowing that the man had been motivated by a cluster of artificial
genes implanted in his ancestors to ensure that they and all their children
would give aid to any human who requested it, assured the nut roaster that his
conduct had been worthy. He proffered coin in ritual payment for the bag of warm
oily peanuts, and the nut roaster made his usual elaborate refusal.
"When you see her, master, tell her that she will find no plumper or more
savoury peanuts in the whole city. I will give her whatever she desires!"
All day, as Mr Naryan made his rounds of the tea shops, and even when he heard
out the brief story of a woman who had composed herself for death, he expected
to be accosted by an exotic wild-eyed stranger. That same expectation distracted
him in the evening, as the magistrate's son haltingly read from the Puranas
while all around threads of smoke from neighbourhood kitchen fires rose into the
black sky. How strange the city suddenly seemed to Mr Naryan: the intent face of
the magistrate's son, with its faint intaglio of scales and broad shelving brow,
seemed horribly like a mask. Mr Naryan felt a deep longing for his youth, and
after the boy had left he stood under the shower for more than an hour, letting
water penetrate every fold and cranny of his hairless, corpulent body until his
wife anxiously called to him, asking if he was all right.
The woman did not come to him that day, or the next. She was not seeking him at
all. It was only by accident that Mr Naryan met her at last.
She was sitting at the counter of a tea shop, in the deep shadow beneath its
tasselled awning. The shop was at the corner of the camel market, where knots of
dealers and handlers argued about the merits of this or that animal and
saddlemakers squatted crosslegged amongst their wares before the low, cave-like
entrances to their workshops. Mr Naryan would have walked right past the shop if
the proprietor had not hurried out and called to him, explaining that here was a
human woman who had no coin, but he was letting her drink what she wished, and
was that right?
Mr Naryan sat beside the woman, but did not speak after he had ordered his own
tea. He was curious and excited and afraid: she looked at him when he sat down
and put his cane across his knees, but her gaze merely brushed over him without
recognition.
She was tall and slender, hunched at the counter with elbows splayed. She was
dressed, like every citizen of Sensch, in a loose, raw cotton overshirt. Her
hair was as black and thick as any citizen's, too, worn long and caught in a
kind of net slung at her shoulder. Her face was sharp and small-featured, intent
from moment to moment on all that happened around her -- a bronze machine
trawling through the dusty sunlight beyond the awning's shadow; a vendor of
pomegranate juice calling his wares; a gaggle of women laughing as they passed;
a sled laden with prickly pear gliding by, two handspans above the dusty
flagstones -- but nothing held her attention for more than a moment. She held
her bowl of tea carefully in both hands, and sucked at the liquid clumsily when
she drank, holding each mouthful for a whole minute before swallowing and then
spitting twiggy fragments into the copper basin on the counter.