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

arranged the laws of nature so that there is no way for an ambitious ruler to run an interstellar empire."
"No way to wield temporal power, I grant you," Kareem said, carefully picking a piece of lint off the
sleeve of his al-Sevilerow jacket. "Not with a four-year communication lag even for the Sultan of Alpha
Centauri. Even if he were to govern through the most trusted of satraps, he'd find it impossible to react to
events. And if a satrap got too big for his britches, how could he be replaced? Poisoned through a spy at
court? The exercise would take eight years from informer to assassin." He flashed an irritating smile. "No,
the Sultan knows that empire in the usual sense is impossible. But if the Caliphate were to be revivedтАФah,
that's another matter entirely."
"Whoever became Caliph would be the undisputed spiritual leader of all Islam," Mr. Fahti said as sternly
as his mild nature would allow him to. "He would exercise the moral authority passed on by the hand of the
Prophet himself."
Kareem favored him with a condescending stare. "Not only moral authority, my friend. We may take a
lesson from the Christians. Through all the long centuries of darkness, the kings ruled Europe, but the Pope
ruled the kings. And Rome re-mained the real center of wealth and power."
Mr. Faqoosh stirred and muttered a little at the mention of Christians, but there was no outburst from him,
for which Hamid-Jones was grateful. The Joneses had always been as good Moslems as anyone else, but
Hamid-Jones had received his share of thoughtless snubs as a child and had never entirely outgrown the old
sensitivity.
"Alpha Centauri would become the center of thingsтАФthe glit-tering capital of the Islamic universe, as
Baghdad was in the days of the Abbasid caliphs," Kareem went on expansively. "It would draw in the
wealth of the stars. And power goes with wealth, as is well known."
"This is all nonsense," Mr. Najib said, finally losing his patience. "The Sultan cannot campaign effectively
for the Ca-liphate from afar. The Emir is a shoo-in."
Mr. Najib's gray-bearded relative cleared his throat and said with all due deference, "There are those
who favor King Bandar al-Saud of Greater Arabia. As custodian of Mecca, he has a natural claim."
"The king is a mere tour director and hotel keeper, living off the alms of pilgrims," Mr. Najib said
scornfully. "No, my friends, Earth is too fragmented to agree on one of its own. It's the Emir or nobody."
"I don't agree," Kareem persisted, either too stupid or too arrogant to know that he had been rebuked by
the older man. "The Sultan of Alpha Centauri has his adherents here. His cre-dentials for donning the robe
of the Prophet are impressive, despite the fact that he's never performed the hajj. Not only is he a member
of Mohammed's tribe, the Quraish, and a certified chereef, as the Sunnis require, but it is being put about
that he is a descendant of Ali, the fourth Caliph, which makes him acceptable to the Shi'ites. Moreover, he
has the Twelvers wrapped around his little finger. There are those among his followers who believe him to
be the reappeared twelfth imam, the Expected MahdiтАФthe Rightly Guided One himselfтАФand I must admit
that he encourages this belief with a certain amount of mumbo jumbo."
Mr. Faqoosh almost choked on his tea. "Blasphemy!" he sputtered.
 "Now, now, sidi," Mr. Najib soothed him. "Don't upset yourself. No one here believes that. He is only
repeating what is said by foreigners. We need not take it seriously."
"The Mahdi was raised up by Allah and hidden somewhere between heaven and earth!" the mullah
ranted. "On the day when the sun will be folded upтАФwhen the skies will split and the stars scatterтАФhe will
return to show us the way! There have been false Mahdis before, and they will roast in hell!"
"Yes indeed," Kareem said languidly. "There are always fanatics, like the mad mullah, Mohammed
Ahmed, who gave the British such a hard time at Khartoum, or that lot who actually seized the Great
Mosque in Mecca a thousand years ago, and had to be flushed out by the Saudi army. Their Mahdi, as I
recall, turned out to be some lunatic university student with mystic pretensions."
Mr. Faqoosh was actually foaming at the mouth. Hamid-Jones watched, fascinated, as a bubble grew at
the mullah's scraggly fringe of beard and burst.
"The Sultan is certainly wicked to encourage such claims," Mr. Najib interposed hastily. "But he is an
arrant mischief-maker. On the one hand he claims the bond of Islamic broth-erhood and sends the Emir
gifts of Centauran novelties. On the other hand, his agents secretly channel funds to terrorist groups like the