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

mad with holiness, I rode on my golden throne. Closer to me than any were my Kumarimas, my two
Mothers, so splendid and ornate in their red robes and headdresses and make-up they did not look like
humans at all. But Tall Kumarima’s voice and Smiling Kumarima’s smile assured me as I rode with
Hanuman and Taleju through the cheering and the music and the banners bright against the blue sky and
the smell I now recognized from the night I became a goddess, the smell of blood.

That Dasain the city received me as never before. The roar of the night of Lakshmi continued into the
day. As Taleju Devi I was not supposed to notice anything as low as humans but out of the corners of
my painted eyes I could see beyond the security robots stepping in time with my bearers, and the streets
radiating out from the stupa of Chhetrapati were solid with bodies. They threw jets and gushes of water
from plastic bottles up into the air, glittering, breaking into little rainbows, raining down on them, soaking
them, but they did not care. Their faces were crazy with devotion.

Tall Kumarima saw my puzzlement and bent to whisper.

“They do puja for the rain. The monsoon has failed a second time, devi.”

As I spoke, Smiling Kumarima fanned me so no one would see my lips move. “We don’t like the rain,” I
said firmly.

“A goddess cannot do only what she likes,” Tall Kumarima said. “It is a serious matter. The people have
no water. The rivers are running dry.”

I thought of the river that ran far down deep below the house where I was born, the water creamy and
gushing and flecked with yellow foam. I saw it swallow my uncle and could not imagine it ever becoming
thin, weak, hungry.

“So why do they throw water then?” I asked.

“So the devi will give them more,” Smiling Kumarima explained. But I could not see the sense in that
even for goddesses and I frowned, trying to understand how humans were and so I was looking right at
him when he came at me.

He had city-pale skin and hair parted on the left that flopped as he dived out of the crowd. He moved his
fists to the collar of his diagonally striped shirt and people surged away from him. I saw him hook his
thumbs into two loops of black string. I saw his mouth open in a great cry. Then the machine swooped
and I saw a flash of silver. The young man’s head flew up into the air. His mouth and eyes went round:
from a cry to an oh! The King’s Own machine had sheathed its blade, like a boy folding a knife, before
the body, like that funny goat in the Hanumandhoka, realized it was dead and fell to the ground. The
crowd screamed and tried to get away from the headless thing. My bearers rocked, swayed, uncertain
where to go, what to do. For a moment I thought they might drop me.

Smiling Kumarima let out little shrieks of horror, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” My face was spotted with blood.

“It’s not hers,” Tall Kumarima shouted. “It’s not hers!” She moistened a handkerchief with a lick of
saliva. She was gently wiping the young man’s blood from my face when the Royal security in their dark
suits and glasses arrived, beating through the crowd. They lifted me, stepped over the body and carried
me to the waiting car.

“You smudged my make-up,” I said to the Royal guard as the car swept away. Worshippers barely