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

The chauffeur is in full dress and boots. His only concession to the heat is his shades. In bra top and tights
and bare skin, she's melting. "The vehicle is fully air-conditioned, memsahb."

The white leather upholstery is so cool her flesh recoils from its skin.

"This isn't the Krishna Cops."

"No memsahb." The chauffeur pulls out into the traffic. It's only as the security locks clunk she thinks Oh
Lord Krishna, they could be kidnapping me.

"Who sent you?" There's glass too thick for her fists between her and the driver. Even if the doors
weren't locked, a tumble from the car at this speed, in this traffic, would be too much for even a dancer's
lithe reflexes. And she's lived in Delhi all her life, basti to bungalow, but she doesn't recognize these
streets, this suburb, that industrial park. "Where are you taking me?"

"Memsahb, where I am not permitted to say for that would spoil the surprise. But I am permitted to tell
you that you are the guest of A.J. Rao."

The palmer calls her name as she finishes freshening up with bottled Kinley from the car-bar.

"Hello!" (kicking back deep into the cool cool white leather, like a filmi star. She is a star. A star with a
bar in a car.)

Audio-only. "I trust the car is acceptable?" Same smooth-suave voice. She can't imagine any opponent
being able to resist that voice in negotiation.

"It's wonderful. Very luxurious. Very high status." She's out in the bastis now, slums deeper and meaner
than the one she grew up in. Newer. The newest ones always look the oldest. Boys chug past on a
home-brew chhakda they've scavenged from tractor parts. The cream Lex carefully detours around
emaciated cattle with angular hips jutting through stretched skin like engineering. Everywhere, drought
dust lies thick on the crazed hardtop. This is a city of stares. "Aren't you supposed to be at the
conference?"

A laugh, inside her auditory center.

"Oh, I am hard at work winning water for Bharat, believe me. I am nothing if not an assiduous civil
servant."

"You're telling me you're there, and here?"

"Oh, it's nothing for us to be in more than one place at the same time. There are multiple copies of me,
and subroutines."

"So which is the real you?"

"They are all the real me. In fact, not one of my avatars is in Delhi at all, I am distributed over a series of
dharma-cores across Varanasi and Patna." He sighs. It sounds close and weary and warm as a whisper
in her ear. "You find it difficult to comprehend a distributed consciousness; it is every bit as hard for me
to comprehend a discrete, mobile consciousness. I can only copy myself through what you call
cyberspace, which is the physical reality of my universe, but you move through dimensional space and