"John Meaney - Sanctification" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meaney John)

Sanctification
a short story by John Meaney

An old blind beggar, a man she never saw before or afterwards, set the
young girl's feet upon the path to Sainthood.
Her body ached, her eyes were dry and sore, as Ashara walked barefoot
through the city of Wusaba. All night, she had been entertaining her fat
old master and his business acquaintances. Despite his abuse of her, she
almost liked him, aware of just how badly treated other servants were. But
her child's soul still ached from misuse.
The mosaic stone paving was warm and dry beneath the tough soles of her
bare feet. She had completed her errand, delivery of a data capsule to
some merchant's house. It was an inconspicuous way to deliver illicit data
beyond the reach of the proctors' monitoring services. Now, having time of
her own, she wandered through the vast boulevards of the city, to sections
she had never seen before.
Through a mile-square crowded bazaar, among tents and stalls, she made her
way slowly. A vast ornate flyer floated silently overhead, jewel-encrusted
and bearing the seal of a scion of the city's noblest class. Ashara
stopped and stared up at it, until it had gone. Then she bought a small
fruit from a stall, using a quarter of her weekly credit allowance, and
walked on, sniffing the fruit, holding back the moment of biting into it.
She walked until she reached the end of the plaza which held the bazaar.
Hesitating - she had never been this far from her master's house - she
walked through an elliptical marble gateway, to the Boulevard of Hands.
The boulevard was half a kilometre wide, and many more long. Its central
avenue was a blue sapphire. To walk on it was to walk upon the sky. On
either side of the vast highway, stone arms flowed upwards from the ground
and reached with outstretched hands up towards heaven. Flyers dotted the
sky around, but none flew directly overhead. The Boulevard of Hands was a
sacred way, and none would desecrate it by allowing machinery to pass over
it.
Squatting in the shade of giant stone arms, anticipating the ferocious
heat of the sun which was yet to beat down upon them, were hundreds of
blind and mutilated beggars, beseeching the genteel passers by with some
dignity of their own, but begging nevertheless. The musical sound of their
voices filled the air. Some recited epic poems, sagas which grew in the
telling over the years, and never ended. Some recited, from memory, long
passages from the Scriptures. Blind beggars read holy words from braille
hardcopies of the Bible or the Koran, preaching to busy crowds who had
little time to hear. Many had lived with their painful diseases for over
two centuries. To Ashara, this was an unimaginable length of time to bear
such suffering. Even among beggars, caste prevailed. The lowest were those
who recited not from memory, but as spokespersons for cerebral implants.
They hoped for employment, she knew, and some might find it. Their
employers were likely, though, to be less than upright citizens. Their
lives might become less painful, but drastically shorter in the world of
shady commerce.
One old man caught her attention, his light musical voice drifting above
the droning of the other beggars as he talked of the religions of many