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

half frozen slush peering at her between puffy lids. A drooping, sensual mouth. Wet, she remembered. He
had licked his lips continually.

Abruptly she asked, "Do you have an envelope?"

The clerk gave her a curious glance as she passed one over. Gretl inserted the payment she had been
about to make, scribbled a few words on the outside, then handed it to the clerk.

"I am not interested in other people paying my debts," she said. "I'll repay my loan on the terms I
specified. See that Mr. Justin gets this."

She turned and strode away, the inner queasiness giving way to amazement and then anger. Wait until
Don Furz heard about this! Unbelievable! The gall of the man!

She had almost reached the door when the hand fell on her shoulder.

He was a tall man, an expressionless man, an uninterested man. He did not look at her as other men
usually looked at her. It was almost as though he did not see her as a person at all. He said very little, but
he did not release her as he said it.

"My name is Spider Geroan. I work for Harward Justin, and he'd like to see you. Now."

2
During Tasmin's orchestral effects class, it turned out that the air pump had been rigged to make farting
noises, always good for a laugh. Practice for the neophytes shuddered to a halt while Tasmin dismantled
the instrument.

"That particular sound is used, so far as I'm aware, only in the run through the Blind Gut," he remarked
to the class. "The only instructive thing about this incident is that there are sounds that work better when
produced instrumentally rather than by synthesizer, which is why we have drums, bells, pumps, and other
paraphernalia тАж "

"You're running perilously close to expulsion, Jamieson," he growled when the class was over. "That
equipment is your responsibility."

"Some of the pre-trippers are kind of uptight," the boy remarked, not at all disturbed at the threat. "I
thought a laugh might help."

There was something in that, enough that Tasmin wasn't inclined to press the matter. As was often true,
Jamieson had broken the rules to good effect. This close to robing and first trip, many of the neophytes
did get nervous and found it hard to concentrate. "Sabotaging equipment just isn't a good idea," Tasmin
admonished in a fairly mild tone. "Some idiot kid fooled around with a jammer drum once, seeing if he
could sound like some 'Soilcoast singer, and it got put into a trip wagon just as it was. Do you need me
to tell you what happened?"

"No, sir." Slightly flushed, but so far as Tasmin was able to discern, unrepentant, Jamieson agreed. "I
remember."

"Well, double check that air pump. Be damn sure it does what it's supposed to do before you leave it."
Jamieson moved to change the subject. "Are we taking any of the first trippers out, Master?"