"Robert A. Heinlein & Spider Robinson - Variable Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

But some people play water polo, voluntarily. Jinny and I had been going out together for
most of a year, and dancing was one of her favorite recreations, so by now I had not only made
myself learn how to dance, I’d actually become halfway decent at it. Enough to dimly
understand how someone with muscles of steel and infinite wind might consider it fun,
anyway.

But that night was something else.

Part of it was the setting, I guess. Your prom is supposed to be a magical time. It was still
quite early in the evening, but the Hotel Vancouver ballroom was appropriately decorated and
lit, and the band was excellent, especially the singer. Jinny was both the most beautiful and the
most interesting person I had ever met. She and I were both finally done with Fermi Junior
College, in Surrey, British Columbia. Class of 2286 (Restored Gregorian), huzzah—go, Leptons!
In the fall we’d be going off to university together at Stony Brook, on the opposite coast of
North America—if my scholarship came through, anyway—and in the meantime we were
young, healthy, and hetero. The song being played was one I liked a lot, an ancient old ballad
called “On the Road to the Stars,” that always brought a lump to my throat because it was one
of my father’s favorites.



It’s the reason we came from the mud, don’t you know

‘cause we wanted to climb to the stars,



In our flesh and our bone and our blood we all know

we were meant to return to the stars,



Ask anyone which way is God, and you know

he will probably point to the stars …
 None of that explained the way Jinny danced that night. I knew her as a good dancer, but
that night it was almost as if she were possessed by the ghost of Gillis. It wasn’t even just her
own dancing, though that was inspired. She did some moves that startled me, phrases so
impressive she started to draw attention even on a crowded dance floor. Couples around us
kept dancing, but began watching her. Her long red hair swirled through the room like the
cape of an inspired toreador, and for a while I could only follow like a mesmerized bull. But
then her eyes met mine, and flashed, and the next thing I knew I was attempting a
combination I had never even thought of before; one that I knew as I began, was way beyond
my abilities—and I nailed it. She sent me a grin that felt like it started a sunburn and offered
me an intriguing move, and I thought of something to do with it, and she lobbed it back with a
twist, and we got through five fairly complex phrases without a train wreck and out the of her
side as smoothly as if we’d been rehearsing for weeks. Some people had stopped dancing to
watch, now.