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

"Inch'allah, ya akhi," the driver said innocently. He squeezed the sand car into the lock and, when the
gate closed behind them, turned in his seat to flash a triumphant grin at the Clone-master and Hamid-Jones.
They were through the lock sooner than Hamid-Jones ex-pected; during the rush hour the third gate was
often kept open and the second cycle dispensed with, and the gatekeepers didn't bother to pump out the
lock completely. Air, after all, was cheap in the Emir's prosperous domain. On the Jovian moons,
Hamid-Jones had heard, one actually paid an air tax.
The buggy climbed the long ramp on its six elephantine tires and emerged into the thin pink sunlight.
Hamid-Jones craned forward to peer through the plastic windscreen at the rubbled landscape as the driver
left the narrow track that headed east toward Xanthe and took off across the desert.
Even after a thousand years of greening, the Martian surface would have been recognizable to the early
pioneers. The same tumbled rocks littered the terrain, and the sky was still brownish with suspended dust.
The air was still thin despite all the carbon dioxide brought in from Venus and the oxygen liberated from
Mars itselfтАФmen and animals still had to wear breathing masks, though pressure suits were no longer
necessary for the hardier breeds, like Marscamels. The bioengineered plant life hardly showed through the
ruddy soil, except to give an occasional greenish tinge to a ridge or depression, or to form a faint retic-ulated
pattern along fractures where water had collected.
The horizon was sharp and near, hiding the peaks of the Thar-sis Range, but Hamid-Jones knew that
Ascraeus was just past the planetary bulge, only a few miles away, and beyond it, Olympus Mons, poking
its crater rim into the stratosphere. He raised his eyes to the sun, small and bright in a butterscotch sky. The
glinting mote that attended it was one of the mirrors that hung in synchronous orbit some ten thousand miles
up, making the Emir's days brighter and his domain somewhat warmer.
A lone nomad appeared from nowhere, sitting cross-legged atop an impossibly tall Marscamel. Carpeting
draped the flanks of the beast, hiding bulging saddlebags that would have been stuffed with homemade
survival equipment. The Bedouin was swathed in flowing robes, an antique submachine gun slung over his
shoulder. Both man and camel wore leather breathing masks. The apparition veered to avoid intersecting
the path of the sand car, loping in dreamlike fashion in the Martian gravity.
"Bedu!" the driver spat.
The guard muttered under his breath. He didn't care much for the lone rider either, though he was a
desert tribesman him-self.
 "He's a bit off his territory, isn't he?" the Clonemaster re-marked. "He'll be sorry if one of the Emir's
patrols catches him. No wonder he's not too anxious to rub elbows with us."
Hamid-Jones murmured assent. The camel, bobbing in slow motion, seemed to float over a ridge, the rider
bouncing upward like a tethered balloon.
"They caught two of those fellows near a severed pipeline last month," the Clonemaster went on.
"Skinned them alive and mounted the skins on poles to serve as an example. They swore they hadn't done
it. Said that the Bedu had been taught long ago not to interfere with the Emir's air supplyтАФand that they
had their own tribal penalties against it. They said the cam-els had led them to the breakтАФthat they couldn't
hold the beasts backтАФand that they were only taking advantage of the spill."
The guard twisted around in his seat with a scowl. "That one belongs to the Banu-Shu'bah tribe. Very bad
people. They would slit a man's throat for his gear, even in defilement of the rules of hospitality."
He turned round again with a righteous grunt and kept his eye on the dwindling camel.
"Personally," the Clonemaster mused, "I think they were telling the truthтАФBedu don't interfere with
oxygen lines. Why would they? Oh, they'll tap a pipeline whenever they can get away with it, but they
restore the seals when they're done. No, it's the terrorist mujahidin who sabotage pipelines and blow up
pumping stationsтАФthe Christian fedayeen or the followers of al-Sharq, the Pretender. What do you think,
ya Abdul?"
He thought carefully before he replied. "It is true that people are prejudiced against the children of the
desert, sidi, and that they are blamed for every missing traveler and every other mis-fortune in the
wastelands. It is hard for a city dweller to under-stand their ways. But it is also said that al-Sharq could not
exist without the support of the desert people . . . that he swims among them as a fish swims in water."