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

"It's all right," she said, drying her eyes on her sleeve. "It's all right, Tasmin. If you feel you have to, I
guess you have to. I just wish you'd forgive yourself and let it go. We can all blame ourselves because
people die. I blamed myself over your father. And over Lim."

"I know you did. This is just something I have to do."

"All right." She twisted the handkerchief in her hands, wringing it, reaching up to run it under her eyes.
"Just be sure you take warm clothes with you. And plenty of food тАж " She laughed at herself. "I sounded
so тАж motherlike. We never outgrow it. We just go on fretting."
"I will, Mother. I'll take everything I need."

He went out to the quiet-car and sat in it, too weary to move for the moment, thinking aloud all the things
he had wanted to say but had not.

"I've always been your good boy, Mother. Yours and Dad's. I never asked questions. I always did what
I was told. If I broke any rules, they were always little rules, for what I thought were good reasons. I
loved someone, even though I knew she loved me in a different way. I wanted a child, and she wanted to
be my child. Still, I really loved her, and sometimesтАФoh, sometimes all that love came back to me a
hundredfold. And I thought if I went on being good, life would be like that always. Something bright and
singing, something terrible and wonderful would come to me. Like my viggy Dad gave me when I was
seven. Like the medal I won. Like Celcy the way she was sometimes. Something joyful.

"And instead there's this thing caught in my throat that won't go down. Two people dead, and I don't
know why. One I loved, one I hated, or maybe loved, I don't know which. Maybe the other way
around. All the things I thought I wanted тАж I don't know about them anymore тАж I thought Celcy was
everything to me, and yet I didn't ever take the time to get things growing between us. I thought I loved
her, yet right there at the end, I was thinking about the Enigma! Why? Why was I thinking about the
music instead of about her?

"What did Lim know or think that was so important to him? What was he trying to prove? What made
her go with him?Why did she die!"

"Celcy," he cried aloud, as though she would answer him, forgive him. "Why, Celcy?"

The Enigma listened, then it didn't. Jamieson called what the Watchling did during our last trip a
joke. He was sure it was laughing at us. Maybe it was. Lim said he knew something, something to
knock Jubal on its ear тАж

He started the car. There was a mount waiting for him at the citadel. The things he was taking with him
were already there, packed by the Tripmaster's own hands into two mule panniers and slung on Tasmin's
saddle. All the supplies a Tripsinger needed to travel alone, a rare thing in itself and one for which the
Master General had been evasive about granting permission.

On the seat beside him was another bag that Tasmin had packed for himself. His favorite holo of Celcy
was there, and the note she had written him, and the earring that was all the Enigma had left him of her.

The toy viggy baby was there, too. He didn't know why he was taking it, except that it couldn't go with
the house and he couldn't bear to throw it away.

He laid his hand on the bag. Through the heavy fabric, Lim's recording synthesizer made a hard, edgy