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

Tharsis-Savoy, who usually kept aloof, and shabby, furtive Mr. Daud, who lived in one room with a rarely
glimpsed wife and a swarm of noisy brats whom he kept hidden behind a curtain.
"Messakum, ya Abdul. Allah bil khair." The greetings be-gan, and he had to go through them one by
one and respond in kind until everybody had had a chance at him. Then it was his turn; he inquired ritually
about the health of each of them until the circle was completed a second time.
"Have some tea, ya Abdul," Mr. Najib coaxed him, and the landlord's servant, Saleh, was at his elbow,
pouring it for him out of an imitation Wedgwood pot that Hamid-Jones recognized as being from the
landlord's second-best service, trotted out for special occasions. The landlord was laying out the
refreshments this evening, tooтАФtrays of hard candies, melon seeds, and sweet cakes. Hamid-Jones was
impressed. The servant passed him a tray of sweet cakes. Hamid-Jones accepted one reluctantly; the
landlord, al-Hajji Arif ibn Zayd, a stingy buzzard who had long since forgotten whatever virtues he had
acquired on the pilgrim-age to Mecca that had given him the right to his honorific, usu-ally found a way to
make one pay for his sporadic acts of "hospitality."
He bit into the cake. It was a kolaicha, made with cardamom seed, just as if it were the Small Holiday
itself that was being celebrated.
 The discussion that had been going on before his arrival re-sumed in full swing. "I don't understand why
the Emir decided to have himself beheaded all of a sudden," Mr. Najib said with a frown. "His current body
can't be more than fifty years old."
"That's right." Little Mr. Fahti nodded. "I remember when the last transposition of heads took place. It
was exactly thirty years agoтАФthe Year of the Prophet 2451. I remember it well because that was the year
the ChristiansтАФmay God forgive their impietyтАФcelebrated the beginning of the year 3000 in their
cal-endar. They made a great fuss over it. Some of their more fanatic sects even claimed their messiah
would reappear to usher in the Third Millennium and overturn the order of things. They stopped paying their
head tax, can you imagine? There would be no taxes in heaven, they said. But the EmirтАФmay God
preserve himтАФ was merciful. He gave them time to come to their senses, and then when it became plain
that there would be no Second Com-ing, made an example of the leaders who had led them astray. The
cages were on display for a month, if you remember, until people began to complain about the smell. Then
he collected double the jizza for that year, to the enrichment of the treasury. Such is his wisdom."
"The Emir is too lenient with unbelievers," the mullah growled. "The old Emir would have done away with
all of them, jizza or no jizza."
"Yes, yes," Mr.Najib said, impatient at the digression, "it was thirty years ago exactly." He turned
indulgently to Hamid-Jones to include him in the conversation. "You would not re-member, of course, ya
Abdul; it was before you were born."
"That is true, ya sidi," Hamid-Jones acknowledged. It was all that was required of him for the moment.
"The cloning prosthesis was a youth of twenty," Mr. Najib continued. "It's still a good, strong bodyтАФgood
for another ten or fifteen years, conservatively speaking."
Mr. Fahti's head bobbed up and down in agreement. "It's another twenty years before it's due to show the
first signs of the degenerative disorder that always afflicts the Emir at that age, and afflicted his father
before him, may God rest his memory."
"Twenty years at least," Mr. Najib said firmly. "Changing bodies is not a thing to be undertaken lightly.
The Emir's pre-vious grafts have always been delayed until his body was well past sixtyтАФnot that any of us
are old enough to remember those occasions personally. And then, from the tales of my father and
grandfather, the event was scheduled at least two years in ad-vance, so that the public celebrations could
be properly planned and the utmost profit taken." His ample jowls quivered. "The loss to the economy will
be severe, and that is what I find par-ticularly hard to understand. The Emir has always been consid-erate
of the interests of businessmen. This sudden rush to decapitate seems precipitous . . . even impulsive." He
added hastily, "Though I'm sure the Emir's advisors must have had good reasons for urging this abrupt
course of action on him at this time."
"It's politics," Mr. Kareem said.
Mr. Najib blinked at the interruption. "I beg your pardon?"