"Joanna Russ - When It Changed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russ Joanna)

of course. There is only half a species here. Men must come back to
Whileaway."

Katy said nothing.

"I should think, Katharina Michaelason," said the man gently, "that you, of
all people, would benefit most from such a change," and he walked past Katy's
rifle into the square of light coming from the door. I think it was then that
he noticed my scar, which really does not show unless the light is from the
side: a fine line that runs from temple to chin. Most people don't even know
about it.

"Where did you get that?" he said, and I answered with an involuntary grin,
"In my last duel." We stood there bristling at each other for several seconds
(this is absurd but true) until he went inside and shut the screen door behind
him. Katy said in a brittle voice, "You damned fool, don't you know when we've
been insulted?" and swung up the rifle to shoot him through the screen, but I
got to her before she could fire and knocked the rifle out of aim; it burned a
hole through the porch floor. Katy was shaking. She kept whispering over and
over, "That's why I never touched it, because I knew I'd kill someone, I knew
I'd kill someone." The first manтАФthe one I'd spoken with firstтАФwas still
talking inside the house, something about the grand movement to re-colonize
and re-discover all that Earth had lost. He stressed the advantages to
Whileaway: trade, exchange of ideas, education. He too said that sexual
equality had been re-established on Earth.

Katy was right, or course; we should have burned them down where they stood.
Men are coming to Whileaway. When one culture has the big guns and the other
has none, there is a certain predictability about the outcome. Maybe men would
have come eventually in any case. I like to think that a hundred years from
now my great-grandchildren could have stood them off or fought them to a
standstill, but even that's no odds; I will remember all my life those four
people I first met who were muscled like bulls and who made meтАФif only for a
momentтАФfeel small. A neurotic reaction, Katy says. I remember everything that
happened that night; I remember Yuki's excitement in the car, I remember
Katy's sobbing when we got home as if her heart would break, I remember her
lovemaking, a little peremptory as always, but wonderfully soothing and
comforting. I remember prowling restlessly around the house after Katy fell
asleep with one bare arm flung into a patch of light from the hall. The
muscles of her forearms are like metal bars from all that driving and testing
of her machines. Sometimes I dream about Katy's arms. I remember wandering
into the nursery and picking up my wife's baby, dozing for a while with the
poignant, amazing warmth of an infant in my lap, and finally returning to the
kitchen to find Yuriko fixing herself a late snack. My daughter eats like a
Great Dane.

"Yuki," I said, "do you think you could fall in love with a man?" and she
whooped derisively. "With a ten-foot toad!" said my tactful child.
But men are coming to Whileaway. Lately I sit up nights and worry about the
men who will come to this planet, about my two daughters and Betta