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

"I don't do autographs.... "Never after a performance. Get out, get away quick and quiet, disappear into
the city. The man opens his palm to show her a warrant badge.

"We'll take this car."

It pulls out from the line and cuts in, a cream-colored high-marque Maruti. The man politely opens the
door to let her enter first, but there is no respect in it. The woman takes the front seat beside the driver;
he accelerates out, horn blaring, into the great circus of night traffic around the Red Fort. The airco purrs.

"I am Inspector Thacker from the Department of Artificial Intelligence Registration and Licensing," the
man says. He is young and good-skinned and confident and not at all fazed by sitting next to a celebrity.
His aftershave is perhaps over-emphatic.

"A Krishna Cop."

That makes him wince.

"Our surveillance systems have flagged up a communication between you and the Bharati Level 2.9 aeai
A.J. Rao."

"He called me, yes."

"At 21:08. You were in contact for six minutes twenty-two seconds. Can you tell me what you talked
about?"

The car is driving very fast for Delhi. The traffic seems to flow around from it. Every light seems to be
green. Nothing is allowed to impede its progress. Can they do that? Esha wonders. Krishna Cops,
aeai police: can they tame the creatures they hunt?

"We talked about Kathak. He's a fan. Is there a problem? Have I done something wrong?"

"No, nothing at all, Ms. But you do understand, with a conference of this importance ... on behalf of the
Department, I apologize for the unseemliness. Ah. Here we are."

They've brought her right to her bungalow. Feeling dirty, dusty, confused she watches the Krishna Cop
car drive off, holding Delhi's frenetic traffic at bay with its tame djinns. She pauses at the gate. She needs,
she deserves, a moment to come out from the performance, that little step way so you can turn round and
look back at yourself and say, yeah, Esha Rathore. The bungalow is unlit, quiet. Neeta and Priya will be
out with their wonderful fianc├Г┬йs, talking wedding gifts and guest lists and how hefty a dowry they can
squeeze from their husbands-to-be's families. They're not her sisters, though they share the classy
bungalow. No one has sisters any more in Awadh, or even Bharat. No one of Esha's age, though she's
heard the balance is being restored. Daughters are fashionable. Once upon a time, women paid the
dowry.

She breathes deep of her city. The cool garden microclimate presses down the roar of Delhi to a muffled
throb, like blood in the heart. She can smell dust and roses. Rose of Persia. Flower of the Urdu poets.
And dust. She imagines it rising up on a whisper of wind, spinning into a charming, dangerous djinn. No.
An illusion, a madness of a mad old city. She opens the security gate and finds every square centimeter of
the compound filled with red roses.