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

accident and couldn't pay for her own regeneration. In advance, of course. No one did regeneration
anymore unless they were paid in advance. And equally, of course, if you needed regeneration, no one
would lend you any money either, except on extortionate terms that sometimes led to involuntary
servitude. The stupid little twit hadn't thought she'd need regeneration insurance. Naturally not, when she
had Gretl to call on.

"Shit," she said feelingly, finding her way through the bruising crowds to the door of the BDL building,
ignoring the looks that followed her. People had been looking at Gretl since she was five, men
particularly. Perhaps it was her skin, like dark, tawny ivory. Perhaps it was her hair, a mahogany wealth
that seemed to have a life of its own. Perhaps it was figure, or face, or merely some expression of lively
unquenchable interest in those wide, dark eyes. But men always looked. Gretl didn't look back,
however. Her heart was with a certain man back on Heron's World, where she'd be, too, as soon as this
contract was over.

"What was that name again," the credit office clerk asked, mystified. "Here, let me see your code book."

Gretl handed it over. One got used to this on Jubal. It cost so much to bring in manufactured materials
that everything on Jubal was used past the point of no return. Nothing ever worked quite right тАж

"It's been paid," the clerk said with a look of knowing complicity.

"Paid?" she blurted in astonishment, only half hearing the clerk. "What do you mean, paid?"

"Your loan has been paid in full," the clerk said, glancing suspiciously from under her eyelashes. "You
didn't know?"

"I sure as hell didn't. Who paid it?"

The clerk fumbled with the keys, frowning, then shaking her head.

"Well?"

"Justin," the clerk whispered.

"Who?"

"Oh, come on, lady." The whisper was angry.

"I asked who that was. For God's sake, girl, tell me. I've only been on this planet for a few months, and
I haven't any idea тАж "

The clerk nodded, a tiny nod, upward and to the right. Gretl looked up. Nothing there but the
glass-enclosed offices of the Brou Distribution Ltd., or BDL, hierarchy. In one of them, a curtain
quivered. "Him," whispered the clerk, suddenly quite pale. "Harward Justin."

"The Planetary Manager?" Gretl fell silent, full of a sick uneasiness. She had met him. When she was
here to arrange the loan, and only for a moment in passing. He had stopped at the desk where she was
waiting, introduced himself, asked her to have lunch with him. She had refused.

A man with no neck, she recalled. Greasy rolls of fat from his jaw to his shoulders. Eyes that looked like