"Walter Jon Williams - Prayers On The Wind (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

"Of course, Miss Taisuke. You will excuse me, Ambassador?"
Jigme and Taisuke moved apart. 'The Incarnation has indicated that he wishes me to continue as head of the government," Taisuke said.
"I congratulate you, Prime Minister," said Jigme, surprised. He had asнsumed the Gyalpo Rinpoche would wish to run the state himself.
"I haven't accepted yet," she said. "It isn't a job I desire." She sighed. " I was hoping to have a randy incarnation, Jigme. Instead I'm being worked to death."
"You have my support, Prime Minister."
She gave a rueful smile and patted his arm. "Thank you. I fear I'll have to accept, if only to keep certain other people from positions where they might do harm." She leaned close, her whisper carrying over the sound of distant fireworks. "Dr. O'Neill approached me. She wished to know my views concerning whether we can declare the Incarnation insane and reinstitute the Regency."
Jigme gazed at Taisuke in shock. "Who supports this?"
"Not I. I made that clear enough,"
"Daddy Carbajal?"
" I think he's too cautious. The new State Oracle might be in favor of the idea--he's such a strict young man, and, of course, his own status would rise if he became the Library's interpreter instead of subordinate to the Gyalpo Rinpoche. O'Neill herself made the proposal in a veiled manner--if such and-such a thing proved true, how would I react? She never made a specific proposal."
Anger burned in Jigme's belly. "The Incarnation cannot be insane!" he said. "That would mean the Library itself is insane. That the Buddha is insane,"
"People are uncomfortable with the notion of a doubtob Incarnation."
"What people? What are their names? They should be corrected!" Jigme realized that his fists were clenched, that he was trembling with anger. "Hush. O'Neill can do nothing."
"She speaks treason! Heresy!"
"Jigme .... "
"Ah. The Prime Minister." Jigme gave a start at the sound of the Incarnaнtion's voice. The floating throne, its gold ornaments gleaming in the light of the burning floats, descended noiselessly from the bright sky. The Incarnation was covered only by a reskyang, the simple white cloth worn even in the bitterest weather by adepts of tumo, the discipline of controlling one's own internal heat.
"You will be my Prime Minister, yes?" the Incarnation said. His green eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. Kyetsang Kunlegs loomed over his shoulder like a demon shadow.
Taisuke bowed, sticking out her tongue. "Of course, Omniscient."
"When I witnessed the floggings the other day," the Incarnation said, "I was shocked by the lack of consistency. Some of the criminals seemed to have the sympathy of the officials, and the floggers did not use their full strength. Some of the floggers were larger and stronger than others. Toward the end they all got tired, and did not lay on with proper force. This does not seem to me to be adequate justice. I would like to propose a reform." He handed Taisuke a paper. "Here I have described a flogging machine. Each strike will be equal to the one before. And as the machine is built on a rotary principle, the machine can be inscribed with religious texts, like a prayer wheel. We can therefore grant prayers and punish the wicked simultaneously."
Taisuke seemed overcome. She looked down at the paper as if afraid to open it. "Very... elegant, Omniscient."
"I thought so. See that the machine is instituted throughout humanity, Prime Minister."
"Very well, Omniscient."
The floating throne rose into the sky to the accompaniment of the murderer Kunlegs' gross bubbling laughter. Taisuke looked at Jigme with desperation in her eyes.
"We must protect him, Jigme," she said. "Of course."
"We must be very, very careful."
She loves him, too, he thought. A river of sorrow poured through his heart. Jigme looked up, seeing Ambassador !urq standing with her head lifted to watch the burning spectacle on the hill opposite. "Very careful indeed," he said.

The cycle of festivals continued. Buddha's birthday, the Picnic Festival, the time of pilgrimage...
In the Prime Minister's lha khang, the Thunderbolt Sow gestured toward Taisuke. "After watching the floggings," it said, "the Gyalpo Rinpoche and Kyetsang Kunlegs went to Diamond City spaceport, where they participated in a night-long orgy with ship personnel. Both have now passed out from indulgence in drink and drugs, and the party has come to an end."
The Prime Minister knit her brows as she listened to the tale. "The stories will get offworld now," Jigme told her. "They're already offworld."
Jigme looked at her helplessly. "How much damage is being done?"
"Flogging parties? Carousing with strangers? Careening from one monasнtery to another in search of pretty boys? Gracious heaven--the abbots are pimping their novices to him in hopes of receiving favor." Taisuke gave a lengthy shudder. There was growing seriousness in her eyes. " I'll let you in on a state secret. 'We've been reading the Sang's despatches."
"How?" Jigme asked. "They don't use our communications net, and the texts are coded."
"But they compose their messages using electric media," Taisuke said. "We can use the Library crystal as a sensing device, detect each character as it's entered into their coding device. We can also read incoming despatches the same way."
"I 'm impressed, Prime Minister."
"Through this process, we were kept informed of the progress of the Sang's military buildup. We were terrified to discover that it was scheduled to reach its full offensive strength within a few years."
"Ah. That was why you consented to the increase in military allotments."
"Ambassador !urq was instructed not to resolve the Gyangtse matter, in order that it be used as a casus belli when the Sang program reached its conclusion. !urq's despatches to her superiors urged them to attack as soon as their fleet was ready. But now, with the increased military allotments and the political situation, !urq is urging delay. The current Incarnation, she suspects, may so discredit the institution of the Gyalpo Rinpoche that our society may disintegrate without the need for a Sang attack."
"Impossible!" A storm of anger filled Jigme. His hands formed the mudra of astonishment.
"I suspect you're right, Jigme." Solemnly. "They base their models of our society on their own past despotisms--they don't realize that the Treasured King is not a despot or an absolute ruler, but rather someone of great wisdom whom others follow through their own free will. But we should encourage !urq in this estimation, yes? Anything to give impetus to the Sang's more rational impulses."
"But it's based on a slander! And a slander concerning the Incarnation can never be countenanced!"
Taisuke raised an admonishing finger. "The Sang draw their own concluнsions. And should we protest this one, we might give away our knowledge of their communications."
Anger and frustration bubbled in Jigme's mind. "What barbarians!" he said. "I have tried to show them truth, but..."
Taisuke's voice was calm. "You have shown them the path of truth. Their choosing not to follow it is their own karma."
Jigme promised himself he would do better. He would compel !urq to recognize the Incarnation's teaching mission.
Teaching, he thought. He remembered the stunned look on the doorнkeeper's face that first Cabinet meeting, the Incarnation's cry at the moment of climax, his own desperate attempt to see the thing as a lesson. And then he thought about what !urq would have said, had she been there.
He went to the meditation box that night, determined to exorcise the demon that gnawed at his vitals. Lust, he recited, provides the soil in which other passions flourish. Lust is like a demon that eats up all the good deeds of the world. Lust is a viper hiding in a flower garden; it poisons those who come in search of beauty.
It was all futile. Because all he could think of was the Gyalpo Rinpoche, the lovely body moving rhythmically in the darkness of the Cabinet room.

The moan of ragdongs echoed over the gardens and was followed by drunken applause and shouts. It was the beginning of the festival of plays and operas. The Cabinet and other high officials celebrated the festival at the Jewel Pavilion, the Incarnation's summer palace, where there was an outdoor theater specially built among the sweet-smelling meditative gardens. The palace, a lacy white fantasy ornamented with statues of gods and masts carrying prayer flags, sat bathed in spotlights atop its hill.