"14 - Fighting Slave of Gor v2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

"That is silly," I said. "You must know hundreds of men."

"Not like you," she said.

"What were you afraid of," I asked, "that I would tell you to go into the kitchen and cook?"

"No," she smiled.

"That I would tell you to go into the bedroom and strip?" I asked.

"Please, Jason," she said, putting her head down, reddening.

"I'm sorry," I said. Inwardly, however, I smiled. I thought it might be quite pleasant to direct the lovely Miss Henderson to enter the bedroom of my small student's apartment and remove her clothing.

"There are various reasons I wanted to speak to you," she said.

"I'm listening," I told her.

"I don't like you, you understand," she said.

"All right," I said.

"And we women aren't afraid of men like you any more," she said.

"All right," I said.

She didn't speak, though. She put her head down.

This evening she was dressed as I had never seen her before. Normally she wore garb of the sort tacitly prescribed for her in her intellectual environs, slacks and pants of various sorts, and shirts and jackets, sometimes with ties. Imitation-male clothing, interestingly enough, is often adopted by individuals who are the most vehement in their claims to be women. It is possible, of course, that those who make the most noise about being women are the least feminine of all. But such matters are perhaps best left to psychologists.

"You look very lovely tonight," I said.

She looked up at me. She wore an off-the-shoulder, svelte, white, satin-sheath gown. She had a small, silver-beaded purse. Her wrists and neck were bare. She had lovely, rounded forearms, and small wrists and hands. Her fingers were small, but lovely and delicate. She did not wear nail polish. On her feet were golden pumps, with a wisp of golden straps.

"Thank you," she said.

I regarded her. She had lovely, exciting shoulders. I saw that her breasts would be very white. Her bosom, small, but sweetly swelling, concealed, strained against the tight satin sheath. I felt I would like to tear the garment from her and throw her on her back, naked and helpless, on the table. When she was crying to be used, I could throw her to the floor, there to make her mine. I thrust such thoughts from my mind.

"But that is surely not the standard uniform in your department," I said.

"I do not know what is going on with me," she said, miserably. She shook her head. "I had to talk to someone."

"Why me?" I asked.

"There are reasons," she said. "Among them is the fact that you are different from the others. I know what the others will say and think. I want someone who thinks for himself, who can be objective. In our short conversations it became clear to me that you are one who thinks not in terms of words but in terms of things and realities. Your thinking is less analogous to the playing of tapes than it is to the photography of facts."

"Many thousands of individuals think in terms of the world, its nature and promise," I said, "not in terms of slogans and verbal formulas. Indeed, those who control the world cannot afford not to. They may use verbal formulas to manipulate the masses, but, in their own thinking, they cannot be limited in this fashion or they would not have come to their positions of power."

"I am accustomed," she said, "to those who think only verbally."