"Judith Merril - Stormy Weather" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

wanting to trying
 The bomb-set was absurdly simple. Usually, there was a certain amount of complicated geometry
involved in the placement. But this one was straightforward. No tricky angle shots this timeтАФ

THE open viewport was a black-felt billiard table and the dark ball of Earth rested in the golden
pocket of the sun. Off to one side, an unknown player held an invisible cue-stick; nothing of it showed
but the blue-chalked tip, where Venus ought to be
And me behind the eight ball. No, he is. One of us is.
Behind the eight ball. Maybe he wasn't on Earth at all. If he was on the other side of the sun for some
reason
She tried to remember whether she had ever messaged cross-sol, and couldn't recall. But if it made
any difference, she'd have learned about it long before this. Sun . . . thermal energy . . . she wanted a
cigarette.
83.323.
She was hungry now, she guessed. It was food she really wanted, not a smoke.
Messaging would make her hungry. It always did.
One message equals two meals. But that was only in terms of direct oxygen consumption. It didn't
figure thermal energy used up at the time, or the air and heat both that went into extra eating afterwards.
The heat didn't matter so much right now; the Station's thermal-erg reserve was a lot bigger than its oxy
margin.
Sure, and it takes a lot more ergs to send than to receive a message, she reminded herself. Besides,
she didn't want to call him. He could reach her if he wanted to, pride said, and common sense approved.
Just can't pull my poor self together. Stormy weather. . . .

IT HAD been raining on Earth, the first time she heard the crazy old song, on a tinny-sounding tape
made from an antique disk-record. That was the one time they'd been separated before. Two weeks
after they first met, when they had their first, last, only, quarrel. For a whole day she couldn't reach him.
She didn't have any pride that timeтАФand she had lots of air.
On Earth the air is free.
She kept trying to find him all day, and couldn't. Then she heard the song.
It had all the tearing, tearful nostalgia so typical of the early twentieth-century folksongs. It sounded
close and loud, for all the cracked acoustics of it, but she couldn't figure out where the sound was coming
from till she realized she'd found him at last. He was listening to it, playing it for her, too proud himself to
say how he felt, but needing her back, and using this way to let her know, if she cared to hear.
A man can afford to be proud. Lucky for both of them that she knew she couldn't. He didn't try to
find her at all; just sat listening to the tearful old tune, hoping she'd come and understand.
A woman couldn't afford to be proud. A Servicegirl couldn't take chances. Maybe that's why there
were more women than men on the Stations, why women did better in psi-training than men. She'd heard
something about new work with older people, where there was no sex differential in aptitude. A man, a
young man, had to be proud. It made biologic sense. But it also meant somatic-semantic sets built-in . . .
preconceptions that would naturally get in the way of free-associative interpretation of psi-somatic
messages.
That meant it was up to her again, just like the last time. She was lucky to have found a guy who
could psi at all. A guy worth having, that is.
But how could she do it? This time they hadn't quarrelled. She didn't know where or how to look for
him.
No way of knowing even whether the scream in the dream had any meaning, or whether it was a
product of her own subconscious fears.
Last month that wouldn't have occurred to her. But the psych tests didn't take into account the things
that might happen when a girl met a guy.