"Donald Moffitt - Mechanical Sky 1 - Crescent in the Sky" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moffitt Donald)

woman who overstepped the harem rules a little and amused herself by looking at the activities in the street.
And perhaps that very woman, whose flash of move-ment he had seen, was on her way right now to
announce to Lalla with breathless giggles that her admirer, the young man who worked for her father, was
waiting outside for a glimpse of her.
He knew that Lalla was aware of him. He knew that, like other male guests, he had been thoroughly and
minutely in-spected and gossiped about by the women of the household from behind the carved screens of
the upper arcade of the women's quarters. And, like any red-blooded swain, Hamid-Jones had fantasized
about what was happening on the other side of the latticework.
He imagined Lalla, the Little Sugarplum, watching him, re-sponding to the small, surreptitious signals that
Arab suitors resorted to in such circumstancesтАФthe dropped rose, the line of poetry with double meaning
deftly inserted into the all-male conversation, the fleeting glance and gesture when his host's attention was
elsewhere. The rustles and giggles he heard at those times came from Lalla, he had convinced himself.
And then his longing was rewarded. One night as the guests were departing and everybody was
engrossed in the elaborate rituals of leave-taking, Hamid-Jones happened to be the last on the way out. At
that moment, Lalla had passed fleetingly behind an unscreened gap, as if she were not aware that anyone
was still there. Either the timing had been exquisite, or the eunuchs in the Clonemaster's household were
unbelievably lax. Lalla had let her veil drop, as if by accident, granting Hamid-Jones a brief, delicious look at
her face. She had done it on purpose, he was sure.
Since that transcendent moment, Hamid-Jones had lived in a fever of anticipation. The next stepтАФafter
some definitive sign from herтАФwould be an exchange of messages. Junior eunuchs could often be
bribedтАФat both endsтАФto carry messages. Eu-nuchs loved intrigue.
It was not inconceivable, Hamid-Jones told himself fiercely. It happened all the time. He stared up at the
window, willing Lalla to appear.
Just as suddenly, he felt deflated. Why was he deceiving himself? There was not a chance in the world
for him. Such proxy, flirtations were winked atтАФeven encouragedтАФwhen the swain was suitable and a
marriage arrangement was deemed desirable. But Hamid-Jones was a nobody, a mongrelтАФwhose
prospects moreover were hostage to the Clonemaster himself. If he were discovered in this impudence, the
Clonemaster would be severeтАФpromising prot├йg├й or no. At the very least, it would mean the end of his
career.
Besides, he had come every night for a week and hung around as long as he dared, and Lalla had never
appeared at the little window. She was laughing at him, he told himself with savage self-contempt.
Or still worse, he had been mistaken; she was not even aware of his existence.
As he prepared to slink off, the geometry of the grille above was suddenly altered by various opacities.
An eye appeared within a star, a pair of lips could be seen between carved blos-soms, and then a little pink
finger poked itself out of a loop of vine and wiggled at him.
Hamid-Jones stopped dead in his tracks, his heart bursting.
Two perfumed gentlemen strolling hand in hand almost collided with him, then, raising groomed eyebrows
at his lack of apol-ogy, moved around him.
While Hamid-Jones continued to gape, the suggested form behind the wooden lacework moved to position
itself so that two dark, liquid eyes stared down at him at once through the spaces in the carving. The red
lips smiled at him for a second or two of extraordinary license before a veil dropped to hide them.
He regained his wits and stepped back out of the flow of traffic. For a sweet eternity, he and Lalla
exchanged burning glances, and Hamid-Jones placed a hand on his heart, heedless of who might see him.
But his happiness was not yet complete. The little finger with-drew, to be replaced by a thumb and
forefinger pinching a white square between them. She waved the square to make sure he'd noticed it, then
released it to flutter down to the street below.
Before he could react, there was a shadowed movement be-hind Lalla's screened form, and Lalla hastily
disappeared. Hamid-Jones found himself staring up at a baleful ebony eye, above which was a pearly
shimmer that might have been a eu-nuch's turban.
His paralysis lasted only a moment. In a flash he darted across the street to scramble under the feet of