"Ian Stewart - Environmental Friendship Fossle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Ian)

The sea-creature lady started scooping up her teabags--swim-bladders from some unidentifiable fish,
probably. Waste not, want not. Protein is protein.
"No, I've seen that kid before," said Wang, bowing apologetically to the sea-creature lady. He spat. "A
cheap little ma jai who pretends he's a dai dai lo. Very quick on his feet, too quick for the likes of you
and me. Even quicker with his thieving paws. He'll grow up to be a fine young pickpocket, if you want
my opinion."

Ma jai means "little horse," and it's the lowest level in a street gang. At the top is the dai dai lo--big, big
brother. Most gangs are affiliated to triads, Hong Kong mafias, with a shuk foo, uncle, as their triad
liaison officer.

Gangs are a nuisance. Triads are dangerous.

Wang brushed his hands against his jacket, sewn in the sweatshops of Shenzhen Special Economic
Zone, a.k.a. Shenzhen Sweatshop or Counterfeit City, a few miles across the border with the People's
Rep. "It was only an ivory pig, Mike. Sells to tourists for fifty dollars, costs about two to make."

The Dutchwoman would have found this information fascinating, but she didn't speak Cantonese, so she
carried on rummaging through the trays of carved wooden animals.

"Ivory."

It was a long moment before I realized that the old man had spoken. It was the first time he'd broken his
silence since I'd been watching him.

"Not real ivory, grandad," I said. "Mammoth ivory--see the sign?" In the window behind the stall was a
faded yellow card: ALL OUR IVORY IS ENVIRONMENTAL FRIENDSHIP FOSSLE FROM
REAL MAMOTH TUSK. There was a time when the signs had said one thing and the ivory was
something else, but after the Sino-African Conservation Treaty of 2016, the flow of illicit elephant and
rhino tusks into China had pretty much dried up, and Wang's funny little animals very probably had been
carved from the fossilized bones of Pleistocene mammoths and mastodons melted out of the Siberian
tundra with jets of superheated steam. I hoped so, because that way I wouldn't have to arrest him. The
paleontologists were none too happy at this development, but at least no noble beasts were getting
slaughtered to make tourist trinkets, and the economy of the Siberian Collective had improved enough to
stop them slaughtering Russians, most of the time, so I figured there was a significant net gain.

"Mammoth ivory," the old man stated, as if it was a proposition put up for debate. "I have hunt
mammoth."

As a reminiscence, it was a lot more interesting than most old men's utterances, but no more plausible
than tall tales of mermaids and dragons, or sexy blondes in bars, come to that. "I can see you're old,
grandad," I told him, "but not that old." He probably meant "elephants." "Did you hunt the mammoths in
Africa?"

"In Siberia," he insisted. "When I was still able to move without pain." His accent was strange, sounded
vaguely ... Mongolian? Perhaps he had been to the Collective, long ago. But not long enough for there to
have been mammoths to hunt.

"Ah, the famed Siberian elephant, the terror of the Steppes," Wang joined in, giggling. Possibly with
embarrassment.