"Paul Park - Starbridge 03 - The Cult of Loving Kindness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Park Paul)

stiffened by the smell of salt. Behind him in the customs shed, his director had turned over and was still.

A gekko lay watching a spider on the balustrade near his right hand. Tendrils of flypaper, twisting gently
in the humid air, hung from the ceiling of the porch. On one of them a moth had lighted and was stuck.

It was a luna moth, with iridescent wings as big as a manтАЩs hand. The deputy administrator sat back in his
chair. He admired the composure of the creature, how it declined to hurt itself in futile struggles against
fate. Its great wings scarcely moved. In a little while he took a pair of scissors from his desk and stood
up behind his chair.

For several minutes he did nothing. From his changed position he could no longer see the moon directly.
It was cut off by the overhanging roof. But instead, he could observe its entire shape reflected in the basin
on his desk. The light spread over the plane of his desk, and fell especially on the image of the saint, and
touched the star-shaped plug of gold upon his palm.

The statue depicted an episode from the saintтАЩs later life: how he calmed the mob below the Harbor
Bridge when Chrism Demiurge was lord of Charn. His sad copper smile was full of wisdom and
compassion.

The insect rustled its bright wings next to the administratorтАЩs headтАФthe faintest susurration on the
midnight air. How long did it have to live? Not long, not long, even in the best of times. He raised the
scissors. Holding the cartridge of the flypaper in his other hand, he stretched it tight, and with
single-minded care he cut the insect loose, amputating its five feet next to the glue.

Suddenly free, the moth folded its wings and dropped tumbling to the desk. It dropped onto its side in
the middle of the basin, troubling the water, scattering the light.
***

Now the moon was rising. The deputy administrator stood looking out over the deserted yard. At
midnight precisely, the light from the lamppost was extinguished, and the silver moon washed unimpeded
over the black grass.
After half an hour the deputy administrator untied his tolliban. He stripped the long gauze veil from around
his mouth and head, revealing features that were almost human. That night he felt supremely sensitive to
every sound; leaning out over the porchтАЩs wooden balustrade, he stood listening to the air in the tall grass.
He heard the bell buoy on the sea ring once, twice. He heard the prisoners breathing in their cells, the
sentries sleeping at their watch, the sodden dreams of his superior in the shed.

He wadded his veil into a ball. Turning, he dropped it onto the center of the blotter on his desk. Next to
it, next to the basin and the drowned moth, lay his appointment book. It was a record of interrogation
stretching far into the past, far into the future: thousands of names penciled in at half-hour intervals, the
faded marks glowing silver in the moonlight.

A ledger of unhappiness and wasteтАФthe deputy administrator stood with his hand over the open book,
his finger on the page for the next day. Only a few hours awayтАФhe had planned to spend the night in
meditation, perhaps dozing for twenty minutes at the end. But now the page felt harsh and rough under
his hand; he closed the book. He lined it up along the edges of the blotter, and then weighted down its
cover with the statue of the saint.

From a cardboard crate on the floor beneath his desk he pulled a change of underwear and two pairs of
socks. These, together with his veil and the untouched bread and cheese, he tied into a bundle, which he