"Elgin, Suzette Haden - Only A Housewife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

servant, to provide her with children . . . children that he had to earn a
living for, not her . . . he fancied himself an authority on the subject of
wives and marriages. Joro knew better. Caleb was besotted, that was what he was;
he was no more than a woman's plaything, though he thought himself such a
wonder. It would have been amusing if Joro had not been forced to live with him.
One's father's foibles; everyone's father had foibles. It gave you something to
talk about at the club. But his friends didn't have those foibles constantly
under their noses; it was easy for them to be indulgent and amused.

Joro's situation was not amusing. It was a burden. An intolerable burden.
Something had to be done. He went into the space his mother had generously
allotted to him for a laboratory -- not that she had any need for it herself any
longer, with all his brothers and sisters gone -- and he applied himself to the
dilemma in the same way he would have tackled any other scientific problem. He
made a list. He laid out the data. He formulated hypotheses and tested them on
the computer, in a model of his own construction. He observed the results, and
he changed the model to reflect them, and he tried again. He was an inspired and
superbly trained scientist; he made a lot of money because he was good at what
he did; and he was methodical. It never crossed his mind that he might not find
the solution.

When it came to him, after two weeks of trying and discarding and trying again,
it was almost laughably simple. He couldn't imagine why it had taken him so long
to think of it, except that of course it's always the simple solutions that do
take time. He had been so delighted that he'd gone out and thrown a huge party
for the men of his circle, inviting even the ones he usually snubbed, and spent
two miserable days getting rid of the resulting hangover. It had been worth it,
a celebration was called for, he had provided a fitting one.

The houses the women grew fed on estrogen, the woman-hormone, and he hadn't been
able to work out either a synthetic that would serve or a way to guarantee a
supply of the real thing. But he had realized, finally, that there was no reason
why a house couldn't live just as well on the male hormone--live better, in
fact. For testosterone meant a stronger house by far. A male house. What could
be more obvious?

The modifications were easily accomplished. The only difficult part had been
finding a family desperate enough to let him take the house-bud away from one of
its daughters who lay near death and had no use for it anyway. He had promised
them that she would feel no pain, and she had not, he had performed the surgery
with scrupulous care, the laser in his hand like a musical instrument of which
he was master. The girl had sighed once and died, her face ravaged by her
illness but unmarked by so much as a twinge of discomfort at Joro's hands. She
was better off dead, as her family was better off for being rid of her and
having the money he paid them.

Joro was quantum leaps ahead of the women. Never mind that they had had
thousands of years to refine the process and fit it to the traditions of the
culture. They were ignorant. It was ridiculous that this matter of shelter had
been left to them for so long. He was not about to live in symbiosis with a