"Anthony, Piers & Farmer, Philip Jose- The Caterpillar's Question (UC)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

The tear coursed down her pale cheek and tucked into the corner of her mouth.

'Tappy—'*

The book dropped to the floor. She scrambled to her feet and ran headlong to the bed. She flung herself facedown, her body heaving.

Jack went to her and put his arm around her flannel shoulders. 'Tappy, I didn't mean to hurt you! I was only hired to—I'm trying to—"

Trying to what? Build her up for a worse fall? Offer her a friendship less man she craved—a friendship that was doomed anyway, tomorrow?

He stroked her hair, ashamed. All he could feel was the vibration of her silent sobbing. He opened his mouth, but could not speak. The situation was impossible.

Finally he turned her over and kissed her.

He could taste the salt of her tears. Then her hunger broke through with a rush that swept away his own equilibrium ... and perhaps his conscience. He kissed her lips, her neck, her hair, and a soft fire ran through his body as her little hands pulled him down beside her, so warm. Suddenly he held an angel in his arms, and mere was nothing else on earth so wonderful.

How could he explain it? He had thought he was experienced. He could only repeat the words of that song on the mountain: "Never did I know till the other day what love, oh love could do..."

Yes, she was blind and mute and only thirteen, and he had known her so very briefly. In that instant of excitement and rapture these considerations were less than nothing; he loved her.

Sanity returned quickly enough after his passion of the moment was sated. She did not try to hold him now. He got up, put himself together, and stumbled out to the car.

He drove, cursing himself for missing the girl beside him, for looking guiltily at the empty seat. He scarcely noticed the teeming magnificence of the Green Mountains, preternaturally brilliant in

16 Piers Anthony and Philip Jose Farmer

the closing evening. His brain was working now, and it was not a pleasant experience.

What was he running from? He knew he couldn't simply drive away and leave her there. He certainly couldn't undo what had passed. He was guilty of statutory rape.

He brought the car to an abrupt halt. There was a lovely miniature waterfall barely visible beside the road, splashing a column of water into a great wooden barrel for roadside use. Its artistic ingenuity was wasted on him tonight.

He had brought this calamity upon himself. He had deviated from the route. He had kept her with him instead of delivering her promptly to the clinic. He had forced his unwitting attentions on her until she had to respond.

Why? Was it because he suspected that he was taking her to no clinic, but to some correctional institution for unwanted burdens, where she would never receive any genuine kindness? Was he trying to shield her from that horror?

Or had he secretly intended to seduce her?

What did a man want widi a woman? Beauty, capability, independence, personality? Or did he really desire, more than anything else, total dependence?

Jack thought about the ways that society crippled women, keeping them out of business and sport and in the house, bound by a pervasive economic and social double standard. A wife had to be smaller than her husband, weaker, less intelligent.

Take that to the logical extreme and—Tappuah.

No, he couldn't believe it. That was not his way. He had only sought to help. But he was not proud of his performance.

He did not know what to do, but he did know he could not leave Tappy unprotected at the motel. Whatever was to come of this, they would see it through together.

One thing was sure: he could not deliver her to the clinic. For him there would be charges he could not deny. For her there would be no freedom, no joy at that place. The moment they heard her talking in her sleep, they would classify her as crazy, and that would be the end of her.