"Maureen McHugh - Nekropolis" - читать интересную книгу автора (McHugh Maureen F)

opened the package and took out the tool to do the jessing. Watching him, I had leaned my head
forward a bit and closed my mouth. ? Lean back,? he said. I leaned back again and looked at the
ceiling. The roof of my mouth felt thick, as if I had drunk something that scalded it, except of course that
it didn't hurt. I felt the pressure of something pressed against the roof of my mouth and there was a sound
like a phffft .

I was more afraid when he'd done it than I'd been before. It was done. I couldn't back out. The jessing
process was happening somewhere in my brain and I was changing. Jessing is supposed to enhance
natural loyalties, but right then I wasn't feeling loyal to much of anything-even my mother's voice was raw
on my nerves. Scared! I was so scared I could feel the sweat under my arms.
I wasn't really sold, of course. It's just that the medicine they use to do the jessing is made in the E.C.U.,
not here in Morocco . It's black-market and costs. The dealer has to get paid a lot, and that money goes
against the bond that I owe to my owner. Not really owe, it's more money than I'll ever make unless
maybe I save everything, never buy as much as a pair of earrings, and work for fifty years. And besides,
when you're jessed, you're not supposed to want to leave. You're supposed to be trustworthy.

Sitting with the gap-toothed boy at the second dealer's, I still didn't feel loyal. I felt irritable and annoyed
and nervous. I had expected never to feel that way again. I had expected my loyalty would be absolute,
like the loyalty of a soldier, or a saint.

When Mbarek-salah came and hired me, I still didn't feel anything, not even when the dealer pronounced
the trigger words. I didn't know at the time that the actual jessing process takes weeks, sometimes even
months. I never felt like a soldier, though. I learned the sad fact that I couldn't give my life away, that
anywhere I went, there I was. If a girl asked me tomorrow if she should be jessed, I don't know what I'd
say. It's not a bad life. It's better than being an old maid in the Nekropolis, the part of the old city where I
grew up. I'd have to ask her: What are you leaving?

I have been with my present owner since I was twenty-one. I'm twenty-six now. I was a good student, I
got good marks in math and literature, so I was bonded to oversee cleaning and supplies. That's better
than if I were a pretty girl and had to rely on looks. Then I would be used up in a few years.

I like my owner, like my work. But now I'd like to go to him and ask him to sell me.

? Hariba,? he'd say, taking my hand in his fatherly way, ? Aren't you happy here??

? Mbarek-salah,? I'd answer, my eyes demurely on my toes. ? You are like a father and I have been
only too happy with you.? Which is true even beyond being jessed, praise God. I don't think I'd mind
being part of Mbarek's household, even if I were unbound. Mostly Mbarek pays no attention to me,
which is how I prefer things. I like my work and my room.

It would all be fine if it weren't for the new one.

I have no problems with AI. I don't mind the cleaning machine, poor thing, and as head of the women's
household, I work with the household intelligence all the time. I may have had a simple, rather
conservative upbringing, but I've come to be pretty comfortable with AI. The Holy Injunction doesn't
mean that all AI is abomination. But AI should not be biologically constructed. AI should not be made in
the image of humanity.

It's the mistress's harni . It's a very expensive, very pretty toy, the kind of thing that the mistress likes. It
cost more, far more than my bond. For what it costs my widowed mother could stop selling funeral