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

and had them all stand before them. Ship's petty officers, Bold judged. Checking the cargo. One of them
inspected the black boy closely. He nodded to the others, and they put wooden bowls of rice on the
floor, and a big bamboo tube bucket of water , and left.

That was the routine for two days. The black boy, whose name was Kyu, spent much of his time looking
down the shithole, at the water it seemed, or at nothing. On the third day they were led up and out to
help load the ship's cargo. It was hauled inboard on ropes running through pulleys on the masts, then
guided down hatches into holds below. The loaders followed instructions from the officer of the watch,
usually a big moonfaced Han. Bold learned that the hold was broken

by interior walls into nine individual compartments, each several times bigger than the biggest Red Sea
dhows. The slaves who had been on ships before said that would make the great ship impossible to sink;
if one compartment leaked it could be emptied and repaired, or even left to flood, but the others would
keep the ship afloat. It was like being on nine ships tied together.

one morning the deck overhead reverberated with the drumming of sailors' feet, and they could feel the
two giant stone anchors being raised. Big sails were hauled up on crossbeams, one for each mast. The
ship began a slow stately rocking over the water, heeling slightly.

It was indeed a floating town. Hundreds lived on it; moving bags and boxes from hold to hold, Bold
counted five hundred different people, and there were no doubt many more. It was astonishing how many
people were aboard. Very Chinese, the slaves all agreed. The Chinese didn't notice it was crowded, to
them it was normal, no different from any other Chinese town.

The admiral of the great fleet was on their ship: Zheng He, a giant of a man, a flat-aced western Chinese,
f
a hui as some slaves called him under their breath. Because of his presence the upper deck was crowded
with officers, dignitaries, priests and supernumeraries of every sort. Belowdecks there were a lot of black
men, Zanjis and Malays, doing the hardest work.

That night four men came into the slaves' room. One was Hua Man, Zheng's first officer. They stopped
before Kyu and grabbed him up. Hua struck him on the head with a short club. The other three pulled off
the boy's robe and separated his legs. They tied bandages tightly around his thighs and around his waist.
They held the semiconscious boy up, and Hua took a small curved knife from his sleeve. He grasped the
boy's penis and pulled it out, and with a single deft slice cut off penis and balls, right next to the body.
The boy groaned as Hua squeezed the bleeding wound and slipped a leather thong around it. He leaned
down and inserted a slender metal plug into the wound, then pulled the thong tight and tied it off. He went
to the shithole and dropped the boy's genitals through it into the sea. Then from one of his assistants he
took a wet wad of paper and held it against the wound he had made, while the others bandaged it in
place. When it was secured two of them put the boy's arms over their shoulders, and walked him out the
door.
They returned with him a watch or so later, and let him lie down. Apparently they had been walking him
the whole time. 'Don't let him drink,' Hua said to the cowed slaves. 'If he drinks or eats in the next three
days, he'll die.'

The boy moaned through the night. The other slaves moved instinctively to the other side of the room, too
scared to talk about it yet. Bold, who had gelded quite a few horses in his time, went and sat by him. The
boy was perhaps ten or twelve years old. His grey face had some quality that drew Bold, and he stayed
by him. For three days the boy moaned for water, but Bold didn't give him any.