"Ian McDonald - The Djinn's Wife" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Ian)

to your performance tonight. It's the highlight of this conference, for me."

The light is almost gone now and the sky a pure, deep, eternal blue, like a minor chord. Houseboys make
their many ways along the ramps and wall-walks lighting rows of tiny oil-lamps. The Red Fort glitters like
a constellation fallen over Old Delhi. Esha has lived in Delhi all her twenty-years and she has never seen
her city from this vantage. She says, "I'm not sure what the etiquette is either. I've never spoken with an
aeai before."

"Really?" A.J. now stands with his back against the sun-warm stone, looking up at the sky, and at her out
of the corner of his eye. The eyes smile, slyly. Of course, she thinks. Her city is as full of aeais as it is
with birds. From computer systems and robots with the feral smarts of rats and pigeons to entities like
this one standing before her on the gate of the Red Fort making charming compliments. Not standing.
Not anywhere, just a pattern of information in her head. She stammers, "I mean, a ... a..."

"Level 2.9?"

"I don't know what that means."

The aeai smiles and as she tries to work it out there is another chime in Esha's head and this time it is
Pranh, swearing horribly as usual, where is she doesn't she know yts got a show to put on, half the
bloody continent watching.

"Excuse me..."

"Of course. I shall be watching."

How? she wants to ask. An aeai, a djinn, wants to watch me dance. What is this? But when she
looks back all there is to ask is a wisp of dust blowing along the lantern-lit battlement.

There are elephants and circus performers, there are illusionists and table magicians, there are ghazal
and qawali and Boli singers; there is the catering and the sommelier's wine and then the lights go up on
the stage and Esha spins out past the scowling Pranh as the tabla and melodeon and shehnai begin. The
heat is intense in the marble square, but she is transported. The stampings, the pirouettes and swirl of her
skirts, the beat of the ankle bells, the facial expressions, the subtle hand mudras: once again she is spun
out of herself by the disciplines of Kathak into something greater. She would call it her art, her talent, but
she's superstitious: that would be to claim it and so crush the gift. Never name it, never speak it. Just let it
possess you. Her own, burning djinn. But as she spins across the brilliant stage before the seated
delegates, a corner of her perception scans the architecture for cameras, robots, eyes through which A.J.
Rao might watch her. Is she a splinter of his consciousness, as he is a splinter of hers?

She barely hears the applause as she curtseys to the bright lights and runs off stage. In the dressing room,
as her assistants remove and carefully fold the many jeweled layers of her costume, wipe away the
crusted stage make up to reveal the twenty-two-year-old beneath, her attention keeps flicking to her
earhoek, curled like a plastic question on her dressing table. In jeans and silk sleeveless vest,
indistinguishable from any other of Delhi's four million twentysomethings, she coils the device behind her
ear, smoothes her hair over it and her fingers linger a moment as she slides the palmer over her hand. No
calls. No messages. No avatars. She's surprised it matters so much.

The official Mercs are lined up in the Delhi Gate. A man and woman intercept her on her way to the car.
She waves them away.