Nekropolis Read Free

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.”
    I laugh, full of nervousness. “It’s not human.”
    “Does it have feelings?” Ayesha asks.
    I shrug. “After a fashion. It’s AI.”
    “It doesn’t look like a machine,” she says.
    “It’s not a machine,” I say, irritated with her.
    “How can it be AI if it isn’t a machine?” she presses.
    “Because it’s manufactured. A technician’s creation. An artificial combination of genes, grown somewhere.”
    “Human genes?”
    “Probably,” I say. “Maybe some animal genes. Maybe some that they made up themselves, how would I know?” It’s ruining my afternoon. “I wish it would offer to go home.”
    “Maybe he can’t,” Ayesha says. “If Mbarek-salah told him to come, he’d have to, wouldn’t he?”
    I don’t really know anything about harni .
    “It doesn’t seem fair,” Ayesha says. “ Harni, “ she calls, “come here.”
    He tilts his head, all alert. “Yes, mistress?”
    “Are harni prescripted for taste?” she inquires.
    “What do you mean, the taste of food?” he asks. “I can taste just like you do, although” -he smiles-“I personally am not overly fond of cherries.”
    “No, no,” Ayesha says. “Colors, clothing. Are you capable of helping make choices? About earrings, for example?”
    He comes to look at the jewelry, and selects a pair of gold and rose enamel teardrops and holds them up for her. “I think my taste is no better than the average person’s,” he says, “but I like these.”
    She frowns, looks at him through her lashes. She’s got me thinking of it as “him.” And she’s flirting with him! Ayesha! A married woman!
    “What do you think, Hariba?” she asks. She takes the earrings, holds one beside her face. “They’re pretty.”
    “I think they’re gaudy.”
    She’s hurt. Honestly, they suit her.
    She frowns at me. “I’ll take them,” she says. The stallman names a price.
    “No, no, no,” says the harni, “you shouldn’t buy them. This man’s a thief.” He reaches to touch her, as if he’d pull her away, and I hold my breath in shock-if the thing should touch her!
    But the stallman interrupts with a lower price. The harni bargains. He’s a good bargainer, but he should be, he has no compassion, no concern for the stallkeeper. Charity is a human virtue. The Second Koran says, “A human in need becomes every man’s child.”
    Interminable, this bargaining, but finally the earrings are Ayesha’s. “We should stop and have some tea,” she says.
    “I have a headache,” I say. “I think I should go home.”
    “If Hariba’s ill, we should go,” the harni says.
    Ayesha looks at me, looks away, guilty. She should feel guilt.
     
    * * *
     
    I come down the hall to access the household AI and the harni ‘s there. Apparently busy, but waiting for me. “I’ll be finished in a minute and out of your way,” it says. Beautiful fingers, wrist bones, beautiful face, and dark curling hair showing just where its shirt closes; it’s elegantly constructed. Lean and long-legged, like a hound. When the technician constructed it, did he know how it would look when it was grown? Are they designed with aesthetics in mind?
    It