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

On the night of the third day the eunuchs returned. 'Now we see whether he will live or die,' Hua said.
They held up the boy, took off the bandages, and with a swift jerk Hua pulled the plug from the boy's
wound. Kyu yelped and groaned as a hard stream of urine sprayed out of him into a porcelain
chamberpot held in place by the second eunuch.

'Good,' Hua said to the silent slaves. 'Keep him clean. Remind him to take out the plug to relieve himself,
and to get it back in quick, until he heals.'

They left and locked the door.
Now the Abyssinian slaves would talk to the boy. 'If you keep it clean it will heal right up. Urine cleans it
too, so that's all right, I mean, if you wet yourself when you go.'

'Lucky they didn't do it to all of us.'

'Who says they won't?'

'They don't do it to men. Too many die of it. Only boys can sustain the loss.'

The next morning Bold led the boy to the shithole and helped him to get the bandage off, so he could pull
the plug and pee again. Then Bold put it back for him, showing him where it went, trying to be delicate as
the boy whimpered. 'You have to have the plug, or the tube will close up and you'll die.'

The boy lay on his cotton shift, feverish. The others tried not to look at the horrible wound, but it was
hard not to see it once in a while.

'How could they do it?' one said in Arabic, when the boy was sleeping.

'They're eunuchs themselves,' one of the Abyssinians said. 'Hua is a eunuch. The admiral himself is a
eunuch.'

'You'd think they'd be the ones to know.'

'They know and that's why they do it. They hate us all. They rule the Chinese Emperor, and they hate
everyone else. You can see how it will be,' waving around at the immense ship. 'They'll castrate all of us.
it's the end coming.'

'You Christians like to say that, but so far it's only been true for you.'

'God took us first to shorten our suffering. Your turn will come.'

'It's not God 1 fear, but Admiral Zheng He, the Three Jewel Eunuch. He and the Yongle Emperor were
friends when they were boys, and the Emperor ordered him castrated when they were both thirteen. Can
you believe it? Now the eunuchs do it to all the boys they take prisoner.'

in the days that followed Kyu got hotter and hotter, and was seldom conscious. Bold sat by his side and
put wet rags in his mouth, reciting sutras in his mind. The last time he had seen his own son, almost thirty
years before, the boy had been about this age. This one's lips were grey and parched, his dark skin dull,
and very dry and hot. Bold had never felt anyone that hot who had not died, so it was probably a waste
of time for all concerned; best to let the poor sexless creature slip away, no doubt. But he kept giving him
water anyway. He recalled the boy looking around the ship as they had loaded it, his gaze intense and