"James Tiptree Jr - The Women Men Don't See" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

The Women Men Don't See
by James Tiptree, Jr

I see her first while the Mexicana 727 is barreling down to Cozumel Island. I come out of the can and
lurch into her seat, saying "Sorry," at a double female blur. The near blur nods quietly. The younger one in
the window seat goes on looking out. I continue down the aisle, registering nothing. Zero. I never would
have looked at them or thought of them again.

Cozumel airport is the usual mix of panicky Yanks dressed for the sand pile and calm Mexicans dressed
for lunch at the Presidente. I am a used-up Yank dressed for serious fishing; I extract my rods and duffel
from the riot and hike across the field to find my charter pilot. One Captain Estéban has contracted to
deliver me to the bonefish flats of Belize three hundred kilometers down the coast.

Captain Estéban turns out to be four feet nine of mahogany Maya puro. He is also in a somber Maya
snit. He tells me my Cessna is grounded somewhere and his Bonanza is booked to take a party to
Chetumal.

Well, Chetumal is south; can he take me along and go on to Belize after he drops them? Gloomily he
concedes the possibility—if the other party permits, and if there are not too many equipajes.

The Chetumal party approaches. It's the woman and her young companion—daughter?—neatly picking
their way across the gravel and yucca apron. Their Ventura two-suiters, like themselves, are small, plain,
and neutral-colored. No problem. When the captain asks if I may ride along, the mother says mildly, "Of
course," without looking at me.

I think that's when my inner tilt-detector sends up its first faint click. How come this woman has already
looked me over carefully enough to accept on her plane? I disregard it. Paranoia hasn't been useful in my
business for years, but the habit is hard to break.

As we clamber into the Bonanza, I see the girl has what could be an attractive body if there was any
spark at all. There isn't. Captain Estéban folds a serape to sit on so he can see over the cowling and runs
a meticulous check-down. And then we're up and trundling over the turquoise Jell-O of the Caribbean
into a stiff south wind.

The coast on our right is the territory of Quintana Roo. If you haven't seen Yucatán, imagine the world's
biggest absolutely flat green-gray rug. An empty-looking land. We pass the white ruin of Tulum and the
gash of the road to Chichén Itzá, a half-dozen coconut plantations, and then nothing but reef and low
scrub jungle all the way to the horizon, just about the way the conquistadors saw it four centuries back.

Long strings of cumulus are racing at us, shadowing the coast. I have gathered that part of our pilot's
gloom concerns the weather. A cold front is dying on the henequen fields of Mérida to the west, and the
south wind has piled up a string of coastal storms: what they call lloviznas. Estéban detours methodically
around a couple of small thunderheads. The Bonanza jinks, and I look back with a vague notion of
reassuring the women. They are calmly intent on what can be seen of Yucatán. Well, they were offered
the copilot's view, but they turned it down. Too shy?

Another llovizna puffs up ahead. Estéban takes the Bonanza upstairs, rising in his seat to sight his course.
I relax for the first time in too long, savoring the latitudes between me and my desk, the week of fishing
ahead. Our captain's classic Maya profile attracts my gaze: forehead sloping back from his predatory
nose, lips and jaw stepping back below it. If his slant eyes had been any more crossed, he couldn't have