"Spider Robinson and Jeanne - Stardance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

Norrey Drummond is a dancer who gets away with looking like a
woman because she’s small. There’s about a hundred and fifteen pounds of
her, and most of it is heart. She stands about five four, and is perfectly
capable of seeming to tower over the tallest student. She has more energy
than the North American Grid, and uses it as efficiently as a vane pump
(have you ever studied the principle of a standard piston-type pump? Go
look up the principle of a vane pump. I wonder what the original
conception of that notion must have been like, as an emotional
experience). There’s a signaturelike uniqueness to her dance, the only
reason I can see why she got so few of the really juicy parts in company
productions until Modern gave way to New Modern. I liked her because
she didn’t pity me.
“It’s not only the leg,” I admitted. “I hate to see the tender fledglings
butcher your choreography.”
“Then you needn’t worry. The piece you’re taping today is by… one of
the students.”
“Oh, fine. I knew I should have called in sick.” She made a face. “What’s
the catch?”
“Eh?”
“Why did the funny thing happen to your voice just as you got to ‘one of
the students’?”
She blushed. “Dammit, she’s my sister.”
Norrey and I are the very oldest and closest of friends, but I’d never
chanced to meet a sister—not unusual these days, I suppose.
My eyebrows rose. “She must be good, then.”
“Why, thank you, Charlie.”
“Bullshit. I give compliments right-handed or not at all—I’m not talking
about heredity. I mean that you’re so hopelessly ethical you’d bend over
backward to avoid nepotism. For you to give your own sister a feature like
that, she must be terrific.”
“Charlie, she is,” Norrey said simply.
“We’ll see. What’s her name?”
“Shara.” Norrey pointed her out, and I understood the rest of the catch.
Shara Drummond was ten years younger than her sister—and seven inches
taller, with thirty or forty more pounds. I noted absently that she was
stunningly beautiful, but it didn’t deter my dismay—in her best years,
Sophia Loren could never have become a modern dancer. Where Norrey
was small, Shara was big, and where Norrey was big, Shara was bigger. If
I’d seen her on the street I might have whistled appreciatively—but in the
studio I frowned.
“My God, Norrey, she’s enormous.”
“Mother’s second husband was a football player,” she said mournfully.
“She’s awfully good.”
“If she is good, that is awful. Poor girl. Well, what do you want me to
do?”
“What makes you think I want you to do anything?”
“You’re still standing here.”
“Oh. I guess I am. Well… have lunch with us, Charlie?”
“Why?” I knew perfectly well why, but I expected a polite lie.
Not from Norrey Drummond. “Because you two have something in