"Spider Robinson - And Subsequent Construction" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

you give anything to be with him one last time if you could? "Here," I said, and gave
her my key ring.
A fraction of her sadness seemed to lift from her. "Thank you, Iris!"
"He'll be pleasantly surprised," I told her, trying to make this sad consolation-
prize as happy as possible. "He's ready for some loving, and not expecting to get it
sooner than dawn at the earliest. Just tell him your selfish need to hear him groan
with joy overcame your need to work; it'll flatter the hell out of him. Uh ... if you
think of it, afterward, kiss him once for me."
"I will," she promised. "I should be back by dawn. If ... if you could use some
consolation yourself, then ... "
The concept was horridly hilarious, mind-boggling; I groped in vain for a
response.
She turned and left hastily.
My pain was so great that I could not contemplate it. Greater, in other words,
than the fire at the heart of a star-drive. My choices were to go mad, or to drown
myself in my work.
After all, I knew now that I could succeed. That I had ... would have had ... done
so.
First invent the time machine, Iris. Then revamp English to fit the new facts.
I booted up my computer and got started. Somewhere in the back of my mind as
I worked was the mad, less-than-half-believed hope that somehow I might employ a
completed time machine to avert the disaster in my future, to use an "undo" key on
reality. It was illogical, but so is all hope.
An hour later I roared with frustrated rage and pounded on my keyboard. Zero
progress.
No. Less than zero. I had succeeded in proving that the line of attack I'd been
using was a dead end. And I could see no other.
I wished I'd cheated, and pumped Jay for hints before letting her go.
Why hadn't I? In too much of a hurry, yes ... but why?
It hit me like a slap. One small component of the eagerness with which I'd agreed
to Jay's pitiful request has been ... oh, shit ... relief. Relief from a minor nagging
guilt. At having accepted Ted's gift of unreciprocated pleasure, earlier that night.
I had welcomed Jay's intervention because it would help me balance a set of
books I prided myself on not keeping.
Why? Because now that I knew I was going to be divorced from Ted some day, I
was subconsciously operating in accordance with one of the basic principles of star-
travel: "When the ship lifts, all bills are paid." I had been able to live with
unbalanced books because I'd believed the ship was never going to lift. But if Ted
and I were going to separate, my selfish subconscious did not want to leave owing
him any debt -- even one as trivial as an unreciprocated orgasm.
... which implied that I felt the separation was imminent ...
The second insight hit with the force of a death-blow, although my subconscious
seemed to have known it for an hour.
Oh, Nameless! All she has to do, in the heat of passion, is to make the slightest
slip, offer the most harmless of hints. Ted's quick: he'll pick up on it at once, even in
the heat of passion, and then he'll get the whole story out of her --
-- and what will he think of me then?
What would you think? Suppose you learned that your spouse had conspired with
her divorced future-self to take advantage of you ... to steal from you love and
affection which you would have withheld if you'd been in possession of all the facts?