"Sheri S. Tepper - After Long Silence" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

Who would, as usual, greet his homecoming with sulks for some little time.

"This whole celibacy thing is just superstition," she pouted, as he had predicted. "Something left over
from old religious ideas from Erickson's time. We've all outgrown that. There's no reason you shouldn't
be able to come home at night even if you are copying a score."

The phrases were borrowed; the argument wasn't new; neither was his rejoinder. "That may be true.
Maybe all the ritual is superstition and nonsense, Celcy love. Maybe it's only tradition, and fairly
meaningless at that, but I took an oath to observe every bit of it, and it's honorable to keep oaths."

"Your stupid oath is more important than I am."

Tasmin remembered a line from a pre-dispersion poet about not being able to love half as much if one
didn't love honor more, but he didn't quote it. Celcy hated being quoted at. "No, love, not more
important than you. I made some oaths about you, too, and I'm just as determined to keep those. Things
about loving and cherishing and so forth." He tilted her head back, coaxing a smile, unhappily aware of
the implications of what he had just said but trusting her preoccupation with her own feelings to keep her
from noticing. Sometimes, as now, he did feel he stayed with her more because of commitment than
desire, but whenever the thought came to him he reminded himself of the other Celcy, the Celcy who,
when things were secure and right, seemed magically to take this Celcy's place. She didn't always act like
this. Certain things just seemed to bring it out.

"I sure don't feel loved," she said sulkily. He sighed, half in relief. She might not take less than a day to
forgive him for having been away for the seventeen days it had taken to orchestrate and copy the new
Enigma scoreтАФor, more accurately, the putative Enigma score since it hadn't been tested on the Enigma
yet, and might never beтАФbut she would come around eventually. Nothing he could do would hurry the
process. If he ignored her, it would take even longer, so he set himself to be pleasant, reminding himself
of her condition, trying to think of small things that might please her.

"What's going on at the center? Something you'd like to see? Any good holos?"

"Nothing good. I went to a new one that Jeanne Gentrack told me about, but it was awful." She
shivered. "All about the people on the Jut, starving and trying to get out through the Jammers after their
Tripsingers were assassinated by that crazy fanatic."

"You know you hate things like that, Celcy. Why did you go?"

"Oh, it was something to do." She had gone alone, of course. Celcy had no women friends and was too
conventional to go with a man, even though Tasmin wouldn't have objected. "I'd heard it was about
Tripsingers, and I thought you might like it if I went." She was flirting with him now, cutely petulant, lower
lip protruding, wanting to be babied and cosseted, making him be daddy. He would try to kiss her; she
would evade him. They would play this game for some time. Tonight she would be "too tired" as a
punishment for his neglect, and then about noon tomorrow she might show evidence of that joyously
sparkling girl he had fallen in love with, the Celcy he had married.

He put on a sympathetic smile. "It's great that you'd like to know more about my work, love, but maybe
seeing a tragic movie about the Jut famine isn't the best way to go about it." Of course, she wasn't
interested in his work, though Tasmin hadn't realized it until a year or two after they were married. Five
years ago, when Celcy was eighteen, her friends had been the children of laborers and clerks, and she