"Greg Egan - Oceanic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

me, I said, "Will you marry me?"
"Very funny. Oh --" Lena took my hand. "I'm sorry, I never know when you're joking."
I said, "We've exchanged the bridge. It doesn't matter that we weren't married first, but it
would make things easier if we went along with convention."
"Martin --"
"Or we could just live together, if that's what you want. I don't care. We're already married
in the eyes of Beatrice."
Lena bit her lip. "I don't want to live with you."
"I could move to Mitar. I could get a job."




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Lena shook her head, still holding my hand. She said firmly, "No. You knew, before we did
anything, what it would and wouldn't mean. You don't want to marry me, and I don't want to marry
you. So snap out of it."
I pulled my hand free, and sat down on the deck. What had I done? I'd thought I'd had
Beatrice's blessing, I'd thought this was all in Her plan ... but I'd just been fooling myself.
Lena sat beside me. "What are you worried about? Your parents finding out?"
"Yes." That was the least of it, but it seemed pointless trying to explain the truth. I
turned to her. "When could we -- ?"
"Not for about ten days. And sometimes it's longer after the first time."
I'd known as much, but I'd hoped her experience might contradict my theoretical knowledge.
Ten days. We'd both be gone by then.
Lena said, "What do you think, you can never get married now? How many marriages do you
imagine involve the bridge one of the partners was born with?"
"Nine out of ten. Unless they're both women."
Lena gave me a look that hovered between tenderness and incredulity. "My estimate is about
one in five."
I shook my head. "I don't care. We've exchanged the bridge, we have to be together." Lena's
expression hardened, then so did my resolve. "Or I have to get it back."
"Martin, that's ridiculous. You'll find another lover soon enough, and then you won't even
know what you were worried about. Or maybe you'll fall in love with a nice Deep Church boy, and
then you'll both be glad you've been spared the trouble of getting rid of the extra bridge."
"Yeah? Or maybe he'll just be disgusted that I couldn't wait until I really was doing it for
him!"
Lena groaned, and stared up at the sky. "Did I say something before about the Angels getting
things right? Ten thousand years without bodies, and they thought they were qualified --"
I cut her off angrily. "Don't be so fucking blasphemous! Beatrice knew exactly what She was
doing. If we mess it up, that's our fault!"
Lena said, matter-of-factly, "In ten yearsтАЩ time, there'll be a pill you'll be able to take
to keep the bridge from being passed, and another pill to make it pass when it otherwise wouldn't.
We'll win control of our bodies back from the Angels, and start doing exactly what we like with
them."
"That's sick. That really is sick."
I stared at the deck, suffocating in misery. This was what I'd wanted, wasn't it? A lover who
was the very opposite of Daniel's sweet, pious Agnes? Except that in my fantasies, we'd always had