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

heal, and with her pregnant, the whole thing had been unforgivable. The longer he stayed away, the
worse it would be.

"You childish bastard," he chided himself in the mirror. "Clod!" The white-haired, straight-nosed face
stared back at him, its wide, narrow mouth an expressionless slit. It might be more to the point to be
angry at Celcy, he thought broodingly, but what good would it do? Being angry with Celcy had few
satisfactions to it. "Idiot," he accused himself. "You can sing your way past practically any Presence in
this world, but you can't get through one touchy social situation!" His eyes were so black they looked
bruised.

He borrowed a quiet-car from the citadel lot and drove home slowly, not relishing the thought of arrival.
When he got there, he found the door locked. Few people in Deepsoil Five locked their doors, but
Celcy always did. He had to find the spare key buried under one of the imported shrubs, running a thorn
into his finger in the process.

She wasn't at home. He looked in their bedroom, in the study, in the kitchen. It was only when he went
to the bathroom to bandage the thorn-stuck finger that he saw the note, taped to the mirror.

"Tasmin, you were just so rude I can't believe it to your very own brother, I gave him the score he
wanted, because I knew you'dbe ashamed of yourself when you had some sleep and he really needs it.
He really does, Tas. It was wrong what you said about his not being a Tripsinger, because what he found
out will make us famous and we're going to the Enigma so he can be sure. You'll be proud of us. It would
be better with you, Lim says, but we'll have to do it just ourselves.

"You were mean to spoil our party, after I decided to go ahead and have the baby just because you
want it even though I don't, and I'm really mad at you."

So, that's what she hadn't been telling him. That's what she had been hiding from him. A desire to end
the pregnancy, not go through with it. The letters of the note were slanted erratically, as though blown by
varying winds. "Drunk," he thought in a wave of frozen anger and pity. "She and Lim stayed at the
restaurant, commiserating, and they got drunk." There were drops of water gleaming on the basin. They
couldn't have left long ago.

He went to his desk to shuffle through the documents he had brought home for study. The Enigma score
was missing.

Surely Lim wouldn't. Surely. No amount of liquor or brou would make him do any such thing. He wasn't
suicidal. He couldn't have forgotten his own abysmal record as a Tripsinger; he wouldn't try the Enigma.
He was too pleased with himself. Surely. Surely.

Tasmin ran from the house. It was possible to drive to within about three miles of the Enigma, but
deepsoil ended suddenly at that point. From there on, travelers went at their peril. With cold efficiency he
checked the gauges. The batteries would carry him that far and back. There were standard field glasses
in the storage compartment.

He was through the foodcrop fields in a matter of minutes and into the endless rows of carefully tended
brou. Ten miles, fifteen. BDL land. Miles of it. BDL, who controlled everything, who would not like this
unauthorized approach to the Enigma.

Who would have his hide if he wrecked their car, he reminded himself, focusing sharply on a five-foot