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

? Then why are you sad?? it asks.

? I am not sad!? I snap.

? I'm sorry,? it says immediately. Blessedly, it's silent while we go down to the train. I point which
direction we're going and it nods and follows. I get a seat on the train and it stands in front of me. It
glances down at me. Smiles. I fancy it looks as if it feels pity for me. (Artifice. Does the cleaning machine
feel sorry for anyone? Even itself? Does the household intelligence? The body chemistry of a harni may
be based on humanity, but it's carefully calculated.)

It wears a white shirt and its skin is smooth. I look at the floor.

The train lets us off at the edge of the Nekropolis, and we climb the steps from the underground platform,
past the unfortunate poor who live in the tunnels. I toss a coin onto a woman's skirt. We come up on the
big plaza outside the Moussin of the White Falcon. Mourners in white stand outside the Moussin and I
can faintly smell the incense on the hot air. The sun is blinding after the cool dark train and the white
Moussin and the mourners' robes are painful to look at. They're talking and laughing. Often, mourners
haven't seen each other for years if a family is spread all across the country. The Moussin of the White
Falcon is especially large, and services go on all the time. It's because it's on the edge of the Nekropolis.
The Nekropolis was a cemetery long before it was a place to live, and the first people who lived there
were beggars, hiding in the tombs.

I look quickly, but I don't see my mother. If my mother sees me with the harni, she'll be upset. She is a
poor woman, and she doesn't like AI, and it would worry her that I had to live in a household with
something like the harni . I hurry through the cemetery gate into the Nekropolis. I hope she's not home,
since Ayesha lives across the street.

The harni looks around, as curious as a child or a jackdaw.

I grew up inside the Nekropolis. We didn't have running water. It was delivered every day in a big
lorritank and people would go out and buy it by the liter, and we lived in three adjoining mausoleums
instead of a flat, but other than that, it was a pretty normal childhood. I have a sister and two brothers.
My mother sells paper funeral decorations. The Nekropolis is a very good place for her to live. No long
train rides every day from the countryside. The part we lived in was old. Next to my bed were the dates
for the person buried behind the wall, 2073 to 2144. All of the family was dead years ago. No one ever
came to this death house to lay paper flowers and birds.

Our house always smelled of cinnamon and the perfume my mother used on her paper flowers and birds.
In the middle death house there were funeral arrangements everywhere and when we ate we would clear
a space on the floor and sit, surrounded. When I was a little girl, I learned the different uses of papers:
how my mother used translucent tissue for carnations, stiff satiny brittle paper for roses, and strong paper
with a grain like linen for arrogant falcons. As children we all smelled of perfume, and when I stayed the
night with my friend Ayesha, she would wrap her arms around my waist and whisper in my neck, ? You
smell good.?

I'm not waiting for the harni . It has to follow, it has no credit for the train ride. If it isn't paying attention
and gets lost, it can walk home.

When I glance back a block and a half later, it's following me, its long curly hair wild about its shoulders,
its face turned artlessly toward the sun. Does it enjoy the feeling of sunlight on skin? Probably, that's a