"Kim Stanley Robinson - The Years Of Rice And Salt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

mouth water at the same time that his stomach flopped.

They came to a slave market. A small square with a raised dais in its middle, somewhat like a lama's
teaching platform. Three slaves were quickly sold. The women being sold garnered the most attention
and comment from the crowd. They were stripped of all but the ropes or chains holding them, if such
were necessary, and stood there listlessly, or cowered. Most were black, some brown. They seemed to
be at the end of auction day,.people selling off leftovers. Before Bold an emaciated girl of about ten years
was sold to a fat black man in dirty silk robes. The transaction was completed in a kind of Arabic; she
sold for some unit of currency Bold had never heard of before, the payment in little gold coins. He helped
his captors get his crusted old clothes off.

'I don't need tying,' he tried to tell them in Arabic, but they ignored him and chained his ankles. He
walked onto the platform feeling the baked air settle on him. Even to himself he emitted a powerful smell,
and looking down he saw that his time in the empty land had left him about as fleshless as the little girl
before him. But what was left was muscle, and he stood up straight, looking into the sun as the bidding
went on, thinking the part of the Lapis Lazuli Sutra that went, 'The ruffian demons of unkindness roam the
earth, begone! begone! The Buddha renounces slavery!'

'Does he speak Arabic?' someone asked.

One of his captors prodded him, and in Arabic he said, 'In the name of God the merciful, the
compassionate, I speak Arabic, also Turkic, Mongolian, Ulu, Tibetan and Chinese,' and he began to
chant the first chapter of the Quran as far as he remembered it, until they pulled his chain and he took this
as a sign to stop. He was very thirsty.

A short, slight Arab bought him for twenty somethings. His captors seemed pleased. They handed him his
clothes as he stepped down, slapped him on the back and were off. He began to put on his greasy coat,
but his new owner stopped him, handing him a length of clean cotton cloth.

'Wrap that around you. Leave the other filth here.'

Surprised, Bold looked down at the last vestiges of his previous life. Dirty rags only, but they had
accompanied him this far. He pulled his amulet out of them, leaving his knife hidden in a sleeve, but his
owner intervened and threw it back onto the clothes.

'Come on. I know a market in Zanj where 1 can sell a barbarian like you for three times what 1 just paid.
Meanwhile you can help me get ready for the voyage there. Do you understand? Help, and it will go
easier for you. I'll feed you more.'

'I understand.'

'Be sure that you do. Don't think of trying to escape. Alexandria is a very fine city. The Mamlukes keep
things stricter than sharia here. They are not forgiving of slaves that try to escape. They're orphans
brought here from north of the Black Sea, men whose parents were killed by barbarians like you.'

In fact Bold himself had killed quite a few of the Golden Horde, so he nodded without comment.
His owner said, 'They have been trained by Arabs in the way of Allah, and now they are more than
Muslim.' He whistled at the thought. 'Trained to rule Egypt apart from all lesser influences, to be true only
to the sharia. You don't want to cross them.'