Nekropolis

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  Nekropolis

  by

  Maureen F. McHugh

  This novel was made possible by support from Bob (and is lovingly dedicated to him).

  Acknowledgments

  A lot of people helped with this book, and I’ll undoubtedly forget someone, the way I forgot to thank Astrid Julian for her tremendous help on Mission Child, but here goes.

  Thanks to Arla Myers, who patiently listened to me outline this book on a seven-hour car ride back home from a convention. Without her and that car ride, this book wouldn’t have happened. To Jennifer Brehl, my patient and long-suffering editor. To Greg Feeley and Sean Stewart, who said important things about this book and about writing in general. To the Cleveland East Side Writers-Sarah Willis, Charlotte Van Stolk, Charlie Oberndorf, Pat Brubaker, Paul Ita, Erin O’Brien Nowjack, and Lori Maddox. You guys are the best. To Sandy Dijkstra, who made me write two books when I only wanted to commit to one. To Gardner Dozois, who published the beginning of this book when other people had turned it down. To Smith and Shelly, who are constitutionally incapable of doubting me.

  Note: The Morocco of this book, while based on the country of the same name, is entirely a fictional creation. Someday I’d like to visit the real place. Until then, please forgive the errors of fact and feeling inflicted on the place and people for the purposes of this story.

  Contents

  1. Paper Flowers

  2. Ties

  3. Duty

  4. The Invisible Rule

  5. In the Land of the Infidel

  1

  Paper Flowers

  How I came to be jessed. Well, like most people who are jessed, I was sold. I was twenty-one, and I was sold three times in one day, one right after another; first to a dealer who looked at my teeth and in my ears and had me scanned for augmentation; then to a second dealer where I sat in the back office drinking tea and talking with a gap-toothed boy who was supposed to be sold to a restaurant owner as a clerk; and finally that afternoon to the restaurant owner. The restaurant owner couldn’t really have wanted the boy anyway, since the position was for his wife’s side of the house.

  The jessing itself happened rather quickly, at the first dealer’s. There was a package with foreign writing on it, from the north across the sea, so even the letters were strange and unreadable. He made me lean my head back and open my mouth, and he sprayed the roof of my mouth with an anesthetic. Then he 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 wreaths and live comfortably in her old age.

  It comes over to our side sometimes-the master says that since it isn’t human, it’s allowed. There is no impropriety-it’s never alone with the mistress. In fact, now, after having it a couple of months, she pretty much ignores it, which would be virtuous if she did it out of any sense of morality, but the truth is it’s like a lot of other things; her little lion dog with the overbite-nasty little thing that Fadina, her body servant, had to feed and bathe until they got rid of it-the house in the country that they bought and only used twice and then sold. She got bored with it.

  It thinks of itself. It has a name. It has gender.

  It thinks it’s male. And it’s head of the men’s side of the house. It thinks we should work together.

  It looks human male and has curly black hair and soft honey-colored skin. It flirts, looking at me sideways out of black vulnerable eyes. Smiling at me with a smile that isn’t in the slightest bit vulnerable. “Come on, Hariba,” it says, “we work together. We should be friends. We’re both young, we can help each other in our work.”

  I don’t bother to answer.

  It smiles wickedly. (Although I know it isn’t wicked, it’s just something grown and programmed. Soulless. I’m not so conservative that I condemn cloning, but it’s not a clone. It is a biological construct. I’ve never seen one before, they’re expensive and rare.) “Hariba,” it says, “I think you are too pure. A Holy Sister.”

  “Don’t sound foolish,” I say.

  “You need someone to tease you,” it says, “you’re very solemn. Tell me, is it because you’re jessed?”

  I don’t know how much it knows. Does it understand the process of jessing? “The Second Koran says that just as a jessed hawk is tamed, not tied, so shall the servant be bound by affection and duty, not
chains, with God’s blessing.”

  “Does the Second Koran say it shouldn’t make you sad, Hariba?”

  Can something not human blaspheme?

  * * *

  In the morning Mbarek calls me into his office. He offers me tea, fragrant of mint, which I sip. He pages through my morning report, nodding, making pleased noises, occasionally slurping his tea. Afternoons and evenings Mbarek’s at his restaurant. I’ve never been in it, but I understand it’s an exceptional place.

  “What will you do this afternoon?” he asks.

  It’s my afternoon free. “My childhood friend Ayesha and I will go shopping, Mbarek-salah.”

  “Ah,” he says, smiling. “Spend a little extra silver,” he says. “Buy yourself earrings or something. I’ll see the credit is available.” He’s a good man. He never holds that money against my bond. A generous man is a wealthy man, as it says in the Second Koran.

  I murmur my thanks. He makes a show of paging through the report, and the sheets of paper whisper against each other.

  “And what do you think of Akhmim, the harni ? Is he working out?”

  “I don’t spend much time with it, Mbarek-salah. Its work is with the men’s household.”

  “You’re an old-fashioned girl, Hariba, that’s good.” Mbarek-salah holds the report a little farther away, striking a very dignified pose in his reading. “Harni have social training, but no practice. The merchant recommended to me that I send it out to talk and meet with people as much as possible. I would like you to help me with this, daughter.”

  I wriggle my toes. He has stopped referring to it as if it were a person, which is good, but now he’s going to try to send it with me. “I must meet my friend Ayesha at her home in the Nekropolis, Mbarek-salah. My mother lives across the street. Perhaps it’s not a good place to take a harni .” The Nekropolis is a conservative place. A lot of the people who live there are poor people who have left farms and small towns to come to the city.

  Mbarek-salah waves his hand airily. “Everything is in order, Hariba,” he says, referring to the reports in front of him. “My wife has asked that you use a little more scent with the linens.”

  His wife thinks I am too cheap. Mbarek-salah likes to think that he runs a frugal household. He does not; money hemorrhages from this house, silver pours from the walls and runs down the street into the pockets of everyone in this city.

  I hope Mbarek will forget about the harni, but he doesn’t. There’s no respite. I must take it with me.

  It’s waiting for me after lunch. I’m wearing lavender and pale yellow, with long yellow ribbons tied around my wrists, and I cover my hair with a lavender veil.

  “Jessed, Hariba,” it says. “You wouldn’t have me along if you weren’t.”

  Of course I’m jessed. I always wear ribbons when I go out. “The Second Koran says ribbons are a symbol of devotion to the Most Holy, as well as an earthly master.”

  It runs its long fingers through its curly hair, shakes its head, and its golden earring dances. Artifice, the pretense of humanity, although I guess even a harni ‘s hair gets in its eyes. “Why would you choose to be jessed?” it asks.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I say. “Come along.”

  It never takes offense, never worries about offending. “Can you tell the difference between the compulsion and your own feelings?” it asks. Jessing changes the unruly brain, makes us feel the loyalty that we should. If I’ve chosen to have myself changed to feel loyalty, then it isn’t really compulsion. And it makes service easier, if it’s something my brain wants me to do.

  “Jessing only heightens my natural tendencies, and makes a servant as trustworthy as kin, praise God,” I say.

  “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 basic biological pleasure. It must enjoy things like eating.

  Ayesha comes out, running on light feet. “Hariba!” she calls. She still lives across from my mother, but now she has a husband and a pretty four-year-old daughter, a chubby child with clear skin the color of amber and black hair. Tariam, the little girl, stands clinging to the doorway, her thumb in her mouth. Ayesha grabs my wrists and her bracelets jingle. “Come out of the heat!” She glances past me and says, “Who’s this?”

  The harni stands there, one hand on his hip, smiling.

  Ayesha drops my wrists and pulls a little at her rose-colored veil. She’s startled, thinking of course that I’ve brought a handsome young man with me. Only a rich man can keep separate households for himself and his wife, but Ayesha is a modest person who wouldn’t go around unescorted with a young man who wasn’t her husband.

  “It’s a harni, “ I say and laugh, shrill
and nervous. “Mbarek-salah asked me to bring him.”

  “A harni ?” she asks, her voice doubtful.

  I wave my hand. “You know the mistress, always wanting toys. He’s in charge of the men’s household.” “He” I say. I meant “it.” “It’s in charge.” But I don’t correct myself, not wanting to call attention to my error.

  “I’m Akhmim,” it says smoothly. “You’re a friend of Hariba’s?”

  I look across the street, but the door to my mother’s house is shut. She must not be home. Praise God. My little brother Nabil is never home in the day.

  Here I am, standing on the street in front of my mother’s house, and the harni is pretending to be a man. It has no respect for my reputation.

  “Ayesha,” I say, “let’s go.”

  She looks at the harni a moment more, then goes back to her little girl, picks her up, and carries her inside. Normally I’d go inside with her, sit, and talk with her mother, Ena. I’d hold Tariam on my lap and wish I had a little girl with perfect tiny fingernails and such a clean, sweet milk smell. It’d be cool and dark inside and we’d eat pistachios and drink tea. Then I’d go across the street to see my mother and youngest brother, Nabil, who’s the only one who lives at home now.

  The harni stands in the street, away from me, looking at the ground. It seems uncomfortable. It doesn’t look at me; at least it has the decency to make it appear we aren’t together.

  Ayesha comes out, bracelets ringing. While we shop in the souk, she doesn’t refer to the harni, but as it follows us, she glances back a lot. I glance back and it flashes a white smile. It seems perfectly content to trail along, looking at the souk stalls with their red canopies like married women’s veils.

  “Maybe we should let him walk with us,” Ayesha says as she stops at a jewelry stall. “It seems rude to ignore him.”