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

“What might work is down south, Bharat or Awadh. They’re so desperate in Delhi they’ll even take
Untouchables. They’re a queer lot, those Indians; some of them might even like the idea of marrying a
goddess, like a status thing. But I can’t take her, she’s too young, they’ll send her straight back at the
border. They’ve got rules. In India, would you believe? Call me when she turns fourteen.”

Two days after my fourteenth birthday, the bride buyer returned to Shakya and I left with him in his
Japanese SUV. I did not like his company or trust his hands, so I slept or feigned sleep while he drove
down into the lowlands of the Terai. When I woke I was well over the border into my childhood land of
wonder. I had thought the bride-buyer would take me to ancient, holy Varanasi, the new capital of the
Bharat’s dazzling Rana dynasty, but the Awadhis, it seemed, were less in awe of Hindu superstitions. So
we came to the vast, incoherent roaring sprawl of the two Delhis, like twin hemispheres of a brain, and to
the Lovely Girl Shaadi Agency. Where the marriageable men were not so twenty-forties sophisticated, at
least in the matter of ex-devis. Where the only ones above the curse of the Kumari were those held in
even greater superstitious awe: the genetically engineered children known as Brahmins.

Wisdom was theirs, health was theirs, beauty and success and status assured and a wealth that could
never be devalued or wasted or gambled away, for it was worked into every twist of their DNA. The
Brahmin children of India’s super-elite enjoyed long life—twice that of their parents—but at a price.
They were indeed the twice-born, a caste above any other, so high as to be new Untouchables. A fitting
partner for a former goddess: a new god.



Gas flares from the heavy industries of Tughluq lit the western horizon. From the top of the high tower I
could read New Delhi’s hidden geometries, the necklaces of light around Connaught Place, the grand
glowing net of the dead Raj’s monumental capital, the incoherent glow of the old city to the north. The
penthouse at the top of the sweeping wing-curve of Narayan Tower was glass; glass walls, glass roof,
beneath me, polished obsidian that reflected the night sky. I walked with stars at my head and feet. It was
a room designed to awe and intimidate. It was nothing to one who had witnessed demons strike the
heads from goats, who had walked on bloody silk to her own palace. It was nothing to one dressed, as
the messenger had required, in the full panoply of the goddess. Red robe, red nails, red lips, red eye of
Siva painted above my own black kohled eyes, fake-gold headdress hung with costume pearls, my
fingers dripped gaudy rings from the cheap jewelry sellers of Kinari Bazaar, a light chain of real gold ran
from my nose stud to my ear-ring; I was once again Kumari Devi. My demons rustled inside me.

Mamaji had drilled me as we scooted from old city to new. She had swathed me in a light voile chador,
to protect my make-up she said; in truth, to conceal me from the eyes of the street. The girls had called
blessings and prayers after me as the phatphat scuttled out of the haveli’s courtyard.

“You will say nothing. If he speaks to you, you duck your head like a good Hindu girl. If anything has to
be said, I will say it. You may have been a goddess but he is a Brahmin. He could buy your pissy palace
a dozen times over. Above all, do not let your eyes betray you. The eyes say nothing. They taught you
that at least in that Kathmandu, didn’t they? Now come on cho chweet, let’s make a match.”

The glass penthouse was lit only by city-glow and concealed lamps that gave off an uncomfortable blue
light. Ved Prakash Narayan sat on a musnud, a slab of unadorned black marble. Its simplicity spoke of
wealth and power beneath any ornate jewelry. My bare feet whispered on the star-filled glass. Blue light
welled up as I approached the dais. Ved Prakash Narayan was dressed in a beautifully worked long
sherwani coat and traditional tight churidar pajamas. He leaned forward into the light and it took every
word of control Tall Kumarima had ever whispered to me to hold the gasp.