"Chalker, Jack L - Soul 1 - Spirits Of Flux And Anchor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

please them, she'd always been a tomboy, getting
into fights and walking, talking, and now working
with the boys, herding, milking, and even break-
ing horses. Tel Anser, the hard old supervisor in

10 Jack L. Chalker

the corral, often held her up as an example to the
boys he worked with, teasing them that she was
far more of a man than any of them. That didn't
win her any popularity contests, of course, but she
didn't really mind. She was proud of the comment.

Still, she was a lonely girl. Partly because of the
way she was, she never got asked to dances, never,
in fact, had even been asked for, let alone been out
on, a single date. Those few boys who did accept
her did so as an equal and a friend -- and that
meant as just one of the boys. It was hard, some-
times, sitting around and listening to them com-
pare notes on girls they were attracted to, driving
home by their very indifference to her sex the fact
that she would never be the object of such conver-
sations, either by them or by others.

Still, the flip side of that never appealed to her
much, either. Perhaps if she'd been pretty, or sexy,
or at least cute, or had big breasts and a big ass
she might have thought differently, but she didn't
have those attributes and never would.

That meant, at least, never having to dress in
those silly, fancy outfits and do all that highpitched
giggling and gushing about that absolutely dreamy
boy in the third row in school, or flirting, putting
on phony perfumes and painting eyes, cheeks, lips --
well, it just seemed so damned silly and stupid to
her, if not downright dishonest. She never saw
why girls had to go through all that stuff anyway,
when boys scored extra points just by taking a
bath.

She'd never gotten along with, nor much liked,
her sisters, either. Of course, part of that was in
being the youngest, and, therefore, the target for
older siblings, but, later on, it was because she
neither liked nor identified with them or their
concerns and they knew it. Well, now she was
riding and herding and milking while her oldest
sister was pregnant with her second kid, the next