"Joe Haldeman - None So Blind (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

taste like
food. But he had known it was going to be a test, and he always did
well on
tests, even when he had to figure out the rules as he went along.
Amy had told him that her father was a self-made millionaire; his
fortune had
come from a set of patents in solid-state electronics. Cletus had
therefore
spent a Saturday at the University library, first searching patents and
then
reading selected texts, and he was ready at least for the father. It
worked very
well. Over soup, the four of them talked about computers. Over the
calimari
cocktail, Cletus and Mr. Linderbaum had it narrowed down to specific
operating
systems and partitioning schemata. With the Beef Wellington, Cletus and
"Call-me-Lindy" were talking quantum electrodynamics; with the salad
they were
on an electron cloud somewhere, and by the time the nuts were served,
the two
nuts at that end of the table were talking in Boolean algebra while Amy
and her
mother exchanged knowing sighs and hummed snatches of Gilbert and
Sullivan.
By the time they retired to the music room for coffee, Lindy liked
Cletus very
much, and the feeling was mutual, but Cletus didn't know how much he
liked Amy,
really liked her, until she picked up the violin.
It wasn't a Strad--she was promised one if and when she graduated from
Julliard--but it had cost more than the Lamborghini in the garage, and
she was
not only worth it, but equal to it. She picked it up and tuned it
quietly while
her mother sat down at an electronic keyboard next to the grand piano,
set it to
"harp," and began the simple arpeggio that a musically sophisticated
person
would recognize as the introduction to the violin showpiece Méditation
from
Massenet's Thaïs.
Cletus had turned a deaf ear to opera for all his short life, so he
didn't know
the back-story of transformation and transcending love behind this
intermezzo,
but he did know that his girlfriend had lost her sight at the age of
five, and
the next year--the year he was born!--was given her first violin. For
thirteen