"Chalker, Jack L - Changewinds 3 - War of the Maelstrom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

"They looked so similar I couldn't tell which girl was
which," he replied. "Two terrified teenage girls pouring out
every emotion possible -- it was confusing. As the resem-
blance struck me, though, I knew it would also strike Bool-
ean. 1 know how he thinks -- now. I knew what he would do,
and I knew that one had to be in so many ways your dupli-
cate. He would inevitably make one look just like the other to
carry on the confusion, but it would be merely physical. I
knew that at their age and stage they would not be certain of
their own minds and feelings, and so I made them choose and
harden the extremes which conflicted within their natures. A
yin and a yang, as it were, so that they could be differenti-
ated. Our target would become a lover of women and gain no
pleasures from a man; the other, the false one, would tilt to
the other extreme. A simple system, and, yet, one Boolean
could do nothing about without negating the duplication as
well, and one that would make our quarry stand out in our
society and, not incidentally, would prevent the natural exper-
imentation that might have resulted in a pregnancy."

"With all that I have undergone I am yet a virgin, although
I do not know why I was not violated in those early days. I
have chosen celibacy, which she certainly has not."

"You weren't violated because it was your power that
interested everyone, and there was a great deal of fear that
virginity was a part of it. Needless, as it turns out. You are

6 Jack L. Chalker

celibate by choice because your nature makes you incapable
of desiring a man and you hide, as she did, from your
attraction to other women by denial. Yet your mother was
like that, and hers before her. It is a part of it.*'

"How could my mother have been thus?" she demanded
angrily. "She had me and her mother had her, and we were
not products of virgin births!"

"They carefully picked the fathers in elaborate rites, and
then stood for it in order to bear their heirs," he responded.
"The gift, or curse, of the Storm Princess included this
always, because one of such powers must be apart from
society, both above and different from its rules and conven-
tions, so as to never compromise that position of power. In
the absence of a Storm Prince, who does not exist, it was the
way to distance the paranormal from the normal, and as a part
of the gift itself it is an essential part of a Storm Princess's
makeup. But she had not yet fully realized or accepted her