"Ian R. MacLeod - Home Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

did the profiles?"

He shakes his head, then nods. "Yeah, but I didn't believe them." He pulls at
his beard. "What did they tell you?"

"They told me I'd be lonely.... They told me I was used to it and that I would
cope." I pause, but why not speak the truth for a change? "They told me that you
two squabbling and screwing would get on my nerves."

He reaches out a hand. My veiny leg is sticking out of my dressing gown as far
as my thigh. He gives it a pat. "I'm sorry, Woolley."

"That's okay," I say, shifting slightly to cover myself. "You read any truthful
account of this kind of mission, it's always the same. Think of Thigh on the
Bounty."

Figgis grins. "And Captain Oates is cursing Scott for his incompetence at this
very moment."

"That's right," I say.

He pauses. Janey's gone quiet next door. Probably listening to us, trying to
catch the words over Epsilon's plastic hum and the muffled scream of the wind.
"Can I ask you a question?"

"Fire away."

"Tell me how you feel about sex, Woolley. I've always wondered."

"You mean, do ugly people have a sex drive! And if so, what do we do with it?"

He doesn't answer. He's down to shorts and a cutoff T-shirt that's ridden up
over his taut belly so that I can see the beginnings of his pubic hair. His
whole body is clear and sharp; no cause for shame. His eyes are sharp too, and
his breath smells sweet through that ridiculous beard: maybe he's drunk another
bottle of the wine. You get used to seeing bits of people when you're a doctor.
But that isn't the same as the whole.

"Yes," I say. "I do have a sex drive. And I'm not a virgin, either. I was once
nineteen like everybody else. You know what it used to be like at those parties
when the College was still taking regular admissions? When people paired off,
there was always some lad drunk enough to do the ugly bitch in the corner a
favor. I went through all of that...that phase. But sex on its own is a
disappointment, isn't it? It's everything that surrounds it that counts."
Figgis's eyes don't flicker. He's watching me the way Janey watches the
instruments when she's piloting the canhopper. "Would you have liked to have
children?" he asks.

That's another question entirely, although I understand from my own bitter
inward arguments that it follows on neatly enough. Is that why I'm thinking