"Paul Park - Starbridge 03 - The Cult of Loving Kindness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Park Paul)

could carry over his shoulder. He picked up one of the saint’s copper medallions from the pile on his
desk.

Due to the success of his department, the market in religious contraband—and especially these emblems
of the Cult of Loving Kindness—was lucrative on both sides of the border. In Caladon the smallest
trinket, for a sweeper or a guard, was worth more than a month’s pay. The deputy administrator, with
this coin, hoped to bribe the sentry at the gate to let him go. Holding it in the center of his palm, he
stalked across the floor and down the steps, leaving his post for the first time in seven months.

The customs compound—six rectangular buildings surrounded by barbed wire—occupied a wooded
ridge above the port, and was connected to it by a metal tram. The deputy administrator stalked across
the yard. The grass was thick under his shoes. Expecting to be challenged, he slunk between two
buildings, keeping to the shadows. But he saw no one. And when he reached the outer gate, the sentry in
the box was fast asleep. So he slid the coin into the pocket of his trousers, and ducked under the
crossbar.

A paved road led southeast from the gate. He followed it for half a mile until he found a bare place in the
trees. Here the road descended sharply toward the port two hundred feet below; from the crest of the
ridge the deputy administrator could see the hands of the breakwater stretching out into the bay, pallid in
the moonlight, each decorated with a single jewel. And there were lights, also, on the packet steamer by
the dock, and a single shining ruby on the bell buoy out to sea. The deputy administrator listened for the
sound—a muffled clanging on the small east wind. He heard it, and heard something else, louder, more
insistent, closer, and he stepped aside into the grass. Below him at the bottom of the hill, the shuttle
started on its hourly circuit from the port to the compound and then back.

He squatted down in the long grass. Soon he could hear the rattle of the car as it labored toward him up
the slope. Soon he could see it—empty, brainless, fully lit, its wheels sparking on the steel rail that ran
beside the road. He crouched down lower as it gained the slope, and he could read the advertisements in
the empty compartment, and smell the singed metal as it hurried past.

Then it was gone. The deputy administrator stood up. For a minute he stood looking back the way he
had come. Then he stepped out onto the road, continuing downhill for another hundred yards before he
turned aside under the trees. A narrow track led away south along the ridge. It was the footpath over
land, due south to the border and beyond, scarcely used now that the packets made the journey twice a
week from Charn.

The forest closed around him after a dozen paces, and the dark was monstrous and loud. To the right
and to the left, beetles quarreled in the underbrush, while high above among the jackfruit trees, tarsiers
grabbed bats out of the air. Furry creatures, stupefied by moonlight, stumbled up against his ankles.

He walked almost for half an hour before the border came in sight: a small white cabin set adjacent to the
track. East and west, a strand of luminescent wire sagged off into the trees, interrupted by the cabin and
a wooden barricade. Placards in five languages were posted to this barricade, though only the boldest
headings—PAPERS PLEASE, FORM SINGLE LINE, EXTINGUISH PIPES—were visible by
moonlight.

Officially, the gate was open. But tongueweed licked at the administrator’s shoes as he came up the
track. He stood studying the placards; to his left, a single lantern glimmered on the cabin’s porch.

By its light he could distinguish the gatekeeper sitting cross-legged on a table, his shoulders hunched, his