"Elizabeth Moon. The Speed of Dark " - читать интересную книгу автора

The recordings wear out... It would be easier if we could just turn on the
radio."
The radio here has loud banging noises or that whining singing, not
music. And commercials, even louder, every few minutes. There is no rhythm
to it, not one I could use for relaxing.
"The radio won't work," I say. I know that is too abrupt by the
hardening in his face. I have to say more, not the short answer, but the
long one. "The music has to go through me," I say. "It needs to be the
right music to have the right effect, and it needs to be music, not talking
or singing. It's the same for each of us. We need our own music, the music
that works for us."
"It would be nice," Mr. Crenshaw says in a voice that has more
overtones of anger, "if we could each have the music we like best. But most
people-" He says "most people" in the tone that means "real people, normal
people."
"Most people have to listen to what's available."
"I understand," I say, though I don't actually. Everyone could bring
in a player and their own music and wear earphones while they work, as we
do. "But for us-" For us, the autistic, the incomplete. "It needs to be the
right music."
Now he looks really angry, the muscles bunching in his cheeks, his
face redder and shinier. I can see the tightness in his shoulders, his
shirt stretched across them.
"Very well," he says. He does not mean that it is very well. He means
he has to let us play the right music, but he would change it if he could.
I wonder if the words on paper in our contract are strong enough to prevent
him from changing it. I think about asking Mr. Aldrin.
It takes me another fifteen minutes to calm down enough to go to my
office. I am soaked with sweat. I smell bad. I grab my spare clothes and go
take a shower. When I finally sit down to work, it is an hour and
forty-seven minutes after the time to start work; I will work late tonight
to make up for that.
Mr. Crenshaw comes by again at closing time, when I am still working.
He opens my door without knocking. I don't know how long he was there
before I noticed him, but I am sure he did not knock. I jump when he says,
"Lou!" and turn around.
"What are you doing?" he asks.
"Working," I say. What did he think? What else would I be doing in my
office, at my workstation?
"Let me see," he says, and comes over to my workstation. He comes up
behind me; I feel my nerves rucking up under my skin like a kicked throw
rug. I hate it when someone is behind me. "What is that?" He points to a
line of symbols separated from the mass above and below by a blank line. I
have been tinkering with that line all day, trying to make it do what I
want it to do.
"It will be the... the link between this"-I point to the blocks
above-"and this." I point to the blocks below.
"And what are they?" he asks.
Does he really not know? Or is this what the books call instructional
discourse, as when teachers ask questions whose answers they know to find