"H.H. Hollis - Sword Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hollis H. H)

just another natural function, like perspiring or excreting, so
that the level of their love-making remained at mere technical
proficiency.
After the fashion her generation had adopted, she was
faithful. There 'might be others later, her manner implied by
its playfulness; but for now, she did not share her favors out.
He was denied even the sour spice of jealousy.
At the end of their last appearance each evening, she was
often wearing only transparent pantaloons and a shiny little
brief, and when they had walked back to their quarters, she
would hold up her arms, and stamping her naked feet softly
like a harem dancer, say, "Help me get ready for my bath,
lover." If he approached and began to roll down the waist-
band of her sateen pants, she would drop her arms and begin
to undress him too. Later they would bathe each other.
They had almost no other conversation.
At last the idyll became an enslavement to the professor.
He found some respite when he learned that a Hindu torture-
man, their neighbor in the show, who slept on nails, poured
boiling lead in his eyes, and so on, was a Failed M.A. in
Mathematics from the University of Rawalpindi. By talking
to him, the topologist was able to keep from going quite mad.
Still, he was a little off. He loathed the girl and dreamed
only of what he would do when she left him; but she would
not leave, and continued to raise her arms to him and stamp
her feet, as exquisitely irritating as a kitten which continues
to claw one's sock after one has done playing with it.
He began to do everything badly, even their turn in the
show, which had never much interested him after he put the
big tesseract together. Once he missed the hole with his thrust,
and the plastic deflected the point of the foil into his toe.
This was a real wound, in real time, not spread along the
space-time continuum, and was extremely painful for a week.
Each time he limped, the pain made him more resolved to be
quit of her, until at last his fertile topological mind .saw the
way.
He had a regular armorefs store of swords with which he
made play in their act, and one evening he laid handy, next
their bed, a very passable imitation of a Roman short sword.
In its day, that design had been a great technological break-
through for the weapons makers, and it was beautifully
shaped for destructive stabbing.
When they came in that night, he skimmed off her tawdry
cape with a flourish, and as she lifted her round arms and
stamped one foot, he peeled the bottom of her costume off in
one extravagant gesture, and then gave her. the pleasure of
chasing him and tearing off his garments. As they were
toweling each other after their ritual coupling and bathing,
he kissed her, tender but preoccupied, as it were, and said,
"My dear, would you mind letting me practice that last pass