"Arthur C. Clarke. The fountains of paradise" - читать интересную книгу автора

And so it was Ambassador-at-Large Rajasinghe who got all the publicity,
as he moved from one trouble-spot to another, massaging egos here, defusing
crises there, and manipulating the truth with consummate skill. Never
actually lying, of course; that would have been fatal. Without Ari's
infallible memory, he could never have kept control of the intricate webs he
was sometimes compelled to spin, that mankind might live in peace. When he
had begun to enjoy the game for its own sake, it was time to quit.
That had been twenty years ago, and he had never regretted his
decision. Those who predicted that boredom would succeed where the
temptations of power had failed did not know their man or understand his
origins. He had gone back to the fields and forests of his youth, and was
living only a kilometre from the great, brooding rock that had dominated his
childhood. Indeed, his villa was actually inside the wide moat that
surrounded the Pleasure Gardens, and the fountains that Kalidasa's architect
had designed now splashed in Johan's own courtyard, after a silence of two
thousand years. The water still flowed in the original stone conduits;
nothing had been changed, except that the cisterns high up on the rock were
now filled by electric pumps, not relays of sweating slaves.
Securing this history-drenched piece of land for his retirement had
given Johan more satisfaction than anything in his whole career, fulfilling
a dream that he had never really believed could come true. The achievement
had required all his diplomatic skills, plus some delicate blackmail in the
Department of Archaeology. Later, questions had been asked in the State
Assembly; but fortunately not answered.
He was insulated from all but the most determined tourists and students
by an extension of the moat, and screened from their gaze by a thick wall of
mutated Ashoka trees, blazing with flowers throughout the year. The trees
also supported several families of monkeys, who were amusing to watch but
occasionally invaded the villa and made off with any portable objects that
took their fancy. Then there would be a brief inter-species war with
fire-crackers and recorded danger-cries that distressed the humans at least
as much as the simians - who would be back quickly enough, for they had long
ago learned that no-one would really harm them.
One of Taprobane's more outrageous sunsets was transfiguring the
western sky when the small electrotrike came silently through the trees, and
drew up beside the granite columns of the portico. (Genuine Chola, from the
late Ranapura Period-and therefore a complete anachronism here. But only
Professor Sarath had ever commented on it; and he of course invariably did
so.)
Through long and bitter experience, Rajasinghe had learned never to
trust first impressions, but also never to ignore them. He had half-expected
that, like his achievements, Vannevar Morgan would be a large, imposing man.
Instead, the engineer was well below average height, and at first glance
might even have been called frail. That slender body, however, was all
sinew, and the raven-black hair framed a face that looked considerably
younger than its fifty-one years. The video display from Ari's BIOG file had
not done him justice; he should have been a romantic poet, or a concert
pianist - or, perhaps, a great actor, holding thousands spell-bound by his
skill. Rajasinghe knew power when he saw it, for power had been his
business; and it was power that he was facing now. Beware of small men, he