"Dan Simmons - The rise of Endymion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

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Augustino Cardinal Lourdusamy was arguably the most powerful human being in the galaxy.
The fact was not lost on the Cardinal that morning.
"Are they here yet, Lucas?" he rumbled at the man who had been his aide and factotum for more
than two hundred busy years. Monsignor Lucas Oddi was as thin, bony, aged-looking, and urgent in
his movements as Cardinal Lourdusamy was huge, fleshy, ageless, and languid.
Oddi's full title as under-secretary of state for the Vatican was Substitute and Secretary of
the Cypher, but he was usually known as the Substitute. "Cypher" might have been an equally apt
nickname for the tall, angular Benedictine administrator, for in the twenty-two decades of smooth
service he had given his master, no one -- not even Lourdusamy himself -- knew the man's private
opinions or emotions. Father Lucas Oddi had been Lourdusamy's strong right arm for so long that
the Secretary-Cardinal had long since ceased to think of him as anything but an extension of his
own will.
"They have just been seated in the innermost waiting room," answered Monsignor Oddi.
Cardinal Lourdusamy nodded. For more than a thousand years -- since long before the Hegira that
had sent humankind fleeing the dying Earth and colonizing the stars -- it had been a custom of the
Vatican to hold important meetings in the waiting rooms of important officials rather than in
their private offices. Secretary of State Cardinal Lourdusamy's innermost waiting room was small --
no more than five meters square -- and unadorned except for a round marble table with no inset com
units, a single window that, if it had not been polarized to opaqueness, would have looked out
onto a marvelously frescoed external loggia, and two paintings by the thirtieth-century genius
Karotan -- one showing Christ's agony in Gethsemane, the other showing Pope Julius (in his pre-
papal identity of Father Lenar Hoyt) receiving the first cruciform from a powerful but androgynous-
looking archangel while Satan (in the form of the Shrike) looked on powerlessly.
The four people in the waiting room -- three men and a woman -- represented the Executive
Council of the Pancapitalist League of Independent Catholic Transstellar Trade Organizations, more
commonly known as the Pax Mercantilus. Two of the men might have been father and son -- M. Helvig
Aron and M. Kennet Hay-Modhino -- alike even to their subtle, expensive capesuits, expensive,
conservative haircuts, subtly bio-sculpted Old Earth Northeuro features, and to the even more
subtle red pins showing their membership in the Sovereign Military Order of the Hospital of St.
John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta -- the ancient society popularly known as the Knights
of Malta. The third man was of Asian descent and wore a simple cotton robe. His name was Kenzo
Isozaki and he was this day -- after Simon Augustino Cardinal Lourdusamy -- arguably the second
most powerful human in the Pax. The final Pax Mercantilus representative, a woman in her fifties,
standard, with carelessly cropped dark hair and a pinched face, wearing an inexpensive work suit
of combed fiberplastic, was M. Anna Pelli Cognani, reputedly Isozaki's heir apparent and rumored
for years to be the lover of the female Archbishop of Renaissance Vector.
The four rose and bowed slightly as Cardinal Lourdusamy entered and took his place at the
table. Monsignor Lucas Oddi was the only bystander and he stood away from the table, his bony
hands clasped in front of his cassock, the tortured eyes of Karotan's Christ in Gethsemane peering
over his black-frocked shoulder at the small assembly.
M.'s Aron and Hay-Modhino moved forward to genuflect and kiss the Cardinal's beveled sapphire
ring, but Lourdusamy waved away further protocol before Kenzo Isozaki or the woman could approach.
When the four Pax Mercantilus representatives were seated once again, the Cardinal said, "We are
all old friends. You know that while I represent the Holy See in this discussion during the Holy
Father's temporary absence, any and all things discussed this day shall remain within these
walls." Lourdusamy smiled.
"And these walls, my friends, are the most secure and bugproof in the Pax."
Aron and Hay-Modhino smiled tightly. M. Isozaki's pleasant expression did not change. M. Anna