"George Alec Effinger - Marid 3 - The Exile Kiss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

One of these special daddies blasts me into full con-sciousness at any hour I choose. I've learned to use it along
with another daddy that supercharges my body to remove alcohol and drugs from my system at better than the normal
rate. That way I don't wake up still drunk or damaged. Others have suffered in the past because of my hangovers, and
I've sworn never to let that happen again.
I took a shower, trimmed my red beard, and dressed in an expensive, sand-colored gallebeya, with the white knit
skullcap of my Algerian homeland on my head. I was hungry, and my slave, Kmuzu, normally prepared my meals, but I
had a breakfast appointment with Fried-lander Bey. That would be after the morning call to prayer, so I had about
thirty minutes free. I crossed from the west wing of Friedlander Bey's great house to the east, and rapped on the door
to my wife's apartment.
Indihar answered it wearing a white satin dressing gown I'd given her, her chestnut hair coiled tightly on the back
of her head. Indihar's large, dark eyes narrowed. "I wish you good morning, husband," she said. She was not
terrifically pleased to see me.
Indihar's youngest child, four-year-old Hakim, clung to her and cried. I could hear Jirji and Zahra screaming at each
other from another room. Senalda, the Valencian maid I'd hired, was nowhere in evidence. I'd accepted the
responsibility of supporting the family because I felt partly to blame for the death of Indihar's husband. Papa
тАФFriedlander BeyтАФhad decided that in order to accom-plish such a worthy goal without causing gossip, I also had to
marry Indihar and formally adopt the three children. I couldn't remember another instance when Papa had cared at all
about gossip.
Nevertheless, despite Indihar's outrage and my flat re-fusal, the two of us now found ourselves man and wife. Papa
always got his way. Some time ago, Friedlander Bey had grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and shaken the dust off
me and turned me from a small-time hustler into a heavy hitter in the city's underworld.
So Hakim was now legally . . . my son, as queasy as that concept made me. I'd never been around kids before and
I didn't know how to act with them. Believe me, they could tell. I hoisted the boy up and smiled in his jelly-smeared
face. "Well, why are you crying, O Clever One?"
I said. Hakim stopped just long enough to suck in a huge breath, then started wailing even louder.
Indihar gave an impatient grunt. "Please, husband," she said, "don't try being a big brother. Jirji is his big
brother." She lifted Hakim out of my arms and dropped him back to the floor.
"I'm not trying to be a big brother."
"Then don't try being a pal, either. He doesn't need a pal. He needs a father."
"Right," I said. "You just tell me what a father does, and I'll do it." I'd been trying my best for weeks, but Indihar
had only given me a hard time. I was getting very tired of it.
She laughed humorlessly and shooed Hakim toward the rear of the apartment. "Is there some actual point to this
visit, husband?" she asked.
"Indihar, if you could just stop resenting me a litde, maybe we could make the best of this situation. I mean, how
awful could it be for you here?"
"Why don't you ask Kmuzu how he feels?" she said. She still hadn't invited me into the suite.
I'd had enough of standing in the hall, and I pushed by her into the parlor. I sat down on a couch. Indihar glared at
me for a few seconds, tiien sighed and sat on a chair facing me. "I've explained it all before," I said. "Papa has been
giving me things. Gifts I didn't want, like my implants and Chiriga's bar and Kmuzu." "And me," she said.
"Yes, and you. He's trying to strip me of all my friends. He doesn't want me to keep any of my old attach-ments."
"You could simply refuse, husband. Did you ever think of that?"
How I wished it were that easy! "When I had my skull amped," I said, "Friedlander Bey paid the doctors to wire the
punishment center of my brain."
"The punishment center? Not the pleasure center?"
I grinned ruefully. "If he'd had the pleasure center wired, I'd probably already be dead. That's what happens to
those wireheads. It wouldn't have taken me long, ei-ther."
Indihar frowned. "Well, then, I don't understand. Why the punishment center? Why would you wantтАФ"
I raised a hand and cut her off. "Hey, / didn't want it! Papa had it done without my knowledge. He's got lots of little
electronic gimmicks that can remotely stimulate my pain centers. That's how he keeps me in line." Learning recently
that he was truly my mother's grandfather had not disposed me more favorably toward him. Not as long as he refused