"Edward L. Ferman - Best From F&SF, 23rd Edition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferman Edward L)

broadly. "Poor Vestal Virgin. How shocking to be confronted with the possibility the temple of her body
has been defiled."
I had expected a more sympathetic reaction. I snapped, "You don't sound very sorry it happened."
She stopped in midstride with her leg in the air. She held the position a few moments, then slowly
lowered the leg and hooked her hair behind her ears while fixing me with a speculative topaz gaze. Her
voice was deliberate. "Why should I be? Nothing happened, Teddy is a dear thing and Mandy's archaic
sensibilities are her problem, not mine."
I stared at her. "You don't like Amanda, do you?"
She considered the accusation. "I wouldn't choose her for a friend. I think she's insipid and gutless.
She could have sent Teddy on his way with a few polite words instead of making an incident of it. Still, I
think I pity rather than dislike her. Don't I let myself get sucked into looking after her like everyone else?
That sweet, yielding, dependency is no more than what her father trained into her. It's the Senator I
dislike." She snorted. "Imagine a contemporary man with a nineteenth-century taste in women. No
wonder my mother left him." She began dancing again.
I was still angry, not ready to stop the fight yet. "She left him? It is my understanding that her
infidelities forced him to divorce her."
The jab left her untouched. With perfect calm and not even a pause in her movement, she said, "He
had the press, I believe." She spun once more and finished in a deep curtsy, then straightened and began
stripping off her exercise suit. "I'm going to swim. Will you come with me?"
She threw herself into the Heliomere without looking back. After a bit I undressed and followed her.
Compared to the chill of the air, the water felt boiling hot. The heat drew out the last of my anger, though.
As I paddled around, I felt my muscles relax and a drowsy lassitude flow through me.
 Too soon, it seemed, Selene was shouting, "Don't go to sleep, Gordy. It's time to get out."
We made the cold dash across the beach to the cabin, picking up our clothes on the way. Inside we
huddled together wishing for a fire and toweled ourselves dry while the polycarpet ran rainbows of
browns and electric blues around our feet. In the course of it I got my arms around Selene. I pulled her
against me. She met my mouth hungrily, but when I started pulling her toward the fake animal pelt in front
of the fireplace, she rammed me with a sharp hipbone and wiggled loose.
"I don't have time. I have to dry my hah" before I wake Mandy."
"You never have time for anything but exercising. Will you ever?"
She licked her lips. "Ask me in January."
I walked back up the beach wondering in bemusement if I could be falling in love with two such
different women at the same time. If so, how fortunate they were the same woman.
I called Amanda later. I expected to find her herself, yesterday already forgotten, but she still
sounded anxious. "Matthew, can you come up?"
I looked unhappily at the couple standing in the outer office with my secretary. What a time for clients
to walk in. "I have some people here. Can it possibly wait?"
There was a pause while she debated. "I guess so, but, please, come when you can."
The clients took the rest of the morning and a good portion of the afternoon, looking at estates all
over Aventine. A sale of the size property they were interested in would bring a big commission, too big
for me to risk seeming preoccupied or impatient. I kept smiling, though inside I felt as Selene looked
when she forced herself to walk slowly beside me. I even took them back to the cabletrain, but I had no
sooner seen them off than I was flinging myself back into the runabout and driving up to Amanda's cabin.
"What's wrong?" I asked, walking in.
Amanda sat wrapped in a shawl and staring into the empty fireplace. The polychair had turned pale
gray. "She's trying to take over, Matthew."
I palled another chair up beside her and sat down. "What do you mean?"
She pulled the shawl tighter around her. "When I got up this morning, that chair you're sitting in was
bright blue. It's always brown or yellow for you. Selene has to have been sitting in it."
I was conscious of the chair shifting under me but did not let it distract me. "Does that mean she's