"Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

oracle, my window on the beautiful. I dived to rescue the tiny plastic fetus. I remember no pain, no
shock, not even Smiling Kumarima’s shriek of horror and fear as her heel came down, but I will always
see the tip of my right index finger burst in a spray of red blood.



The pallav of my yellow sari flapped in the wind as I darted through the Delhi evening crush-hour.
Beating the heel of his hand off his buzzer, the driver of the little wasp-colored phatphat cut in between a
lumbering truck-train painted with gaudy gods and apsaras and a cream Government Maruti and pulled
into the great chakra of traffic around Connaught Place. In Awadh you drive with your ears. The roar of
horns and klaxons and cycle-rickshaw bells assailed from all sides at once. It rose before the dawn birds
and only fell silent well after midnight. The driver skirted a saddhu walking through the traffic as calmly as
if he were wading through the Holy Yamuna. His body was white with sacred ash, a mourning ghost, but
his Siva trident burned blood red in the low sun. I had thought Kathmandu dirty, but Delhi’s golden light
and incredible sunsets spoke of pollution beyond even that. Huddled in the rear seat of the autorickshaws
with Deepti, I wore a smog mask and goggles to protect my delicate eye make-up. But the fold of my
sari flapped over my shoulder in the evening wind and the little silver bells jingled.

There were six in our little fleet. We accelerated along the wide avenues of the British Raj, past the
sprawling red buildings of old India, toward the glass spires of Awadh. Black kites circled the towers,
scavengers, pickers of the dead. We turned beneath cool neem trees into the drive of a government
bungalow. Burning torches lit us to the pillared porch. House staff in Rajput uniforms escorted us to the
shaadi marquee.
Mamaji had arrived before any of us. She fluttered and fretted among her birds; a lick, a rub, a
straightening, an admonition. “Stand up stand up, we’ll have no slumping here. My girls will be the
bonniest at this shaadi, hear me?” Shweta, her bony, mean-mouthed assistant, collected our
smog-masks. “Now girls, palmers ready.” We knew the drill with almost military smartness. Hand up,
glove on, rings on, hook behind ear jewelry, decorously concealed by the fringed dupattas draped over
our heads. “We are graced with Awadh’s finest tonight. Crème de la crème.” I barely blinked as the
résumés rolled up my inner vision. “Right girls, from the left, first dozen, two minutes each then on to the
next down the list. Quick smart!” Mamaji clapped her hands and we formed a line. A band struck a
medley of musical numbers from Town and Country, the soap opera that was a national obsession in
sophisticated Awadh. There we stood, twelve little wives-a-waiting while the Rajput servants hauled up
the rear of the pavilion.

Applause broke around us like rain. A hundred men stood in a rough semi-circle, clapping
enthusiastically, faces bright in the light from the carnival lanterns.

When I arrived in Awadh, the first thing I noticed was the people. People pushing people begging people
talking people rushing past each other without a look or a word or an acknowledgement. I had thought
Kathmandu held more people than a mind could imagine. I had not seen Old Delhi. The constant noise,
the everyday callousness, the lack of any respect appalled me. You could vanish into that crowd of faces
like a drop of rain into a tank. The second thing I noticed was that the faces were all men. It was indeed
as my palmer had whispered to me. There were four men for every woman.

Fine men good men clever men rich men, men of ambition and career and property, men of power and
prospects. Men with no hope of ever marrying within their own class and caste. Men with little prospect
of marrying ever. Shaadi had once been the word for wedding festivities, the groom on his beautiful
white horse, so noble, the bride shy and lovely behind her golden veil. Then it became a name for dating
agencies: lovely wheat-complexioned Agarwal, U.S.-university MBA, seeks same civil