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

had thought it was a coup to marry a Tripsinger. She had listened to him then, eyes shining, as he told her
about this triumph or that defeat. Now all their friends were citadel people, and Tasmin was merely one
of the crowd, nothing special, nothing to brag about, just a man engaged in uninteresting activities that
forced him to leave her alone a lot. He could even sympathize with her resentment. Some of his work
bored him, too.

"It's not just that she's bored, Tas," his mother had said, fumbling for his hand through the perpetual mists
that her blindness made of her world. "Her parents died on a trip. Her uncle took her in, but he had
children of his own, and they wouldn't be normal if they hadn't resented her. Then, on their way to
Deepsoil Five, there was a disaster, one wagon completely lost, several people badly maimed. Poor little
Celcy was only eight or nine and hardly slept for weeks after they got here. She's frightened to death of
being abandoned and of the Presences."

He had been dumbfounded. "I never knew that! How did you?"

She had frowned, blind eyes searching for memory. "I think Celcy's uncle told me most of it, Tas. At
your wedding."

"I wonder why she never mentioned it to me?" he had mused aloud.

"Because she doesn't want to admit it or remember it," his mother had answered in that slightly
sharpened voice reserved for occasions when Tasmin, or his father before him, had been unusually
dense. Tasmin remembered his father, Miles Ferrence, as a grim, pious man who said little and expected
much, given to unexpected fits of fury toward the world and his family, interspersed with equally
unexpected pits of deep depression. Miles had gone into peril and died at the foot of the Black Tower
the year after тАж well, the year after Tasmin's older brother had тАж Never mind. Tasmin had been
surprised at how difficult it was to mourn his father, and then had been troubled by his own surprise.

Celcy was still talking about the holodrama, her voice becoming agitated and querulous. "I couldn't see
why they didn't build boats and just float down the shore. Why did they have to get out through the
Jammers?"

He closed his eyes, shutting out other thoughts and recollections, visualizing the map of the Jut. The far
northwest of Jubal, an area called New Pacifica. A peninsula of deepsoil protruding into a shallow bay.
At the continental end of this Jut were two great crystal promontories, the JammersтАФnot merely
promontories but Presences. Between them led a steep, narrow pass that connected the Jut to the land
mass of New Pacifica and the rest of Jubal, while out in the bay, like the protruding teeth of a mighty
carnivore, clustered the smallerтАФthough still very largeтАФoffspring of the Jammers, the Jammlings.

"Jammlings," he said. "Scattered all through the water. I don't think there's a space a hundred yards wide
between them anywhere. The Juttites would have needed a Tripsinger to get through there just as they
did to get between the Jammers."

"Oh. Well, none of the characters said that in the holo. They just kept getting more and more starved
until they got desperate." Her face was very pale and there were tiny drops of moisture on her forehead.
"Then they tried rushing past the Jam тАж the Jam тАж the Presences, and somebody tried to sing them
through and couldn't and everybody got squashed and ripped apart and тАж well, you know. It was
bloody and awful." Her voice was a choked gargle.

Well, of course it was, an inner voice said. As you should have known, silly girl. He pulled her to him