"James Tiptree Jr. -10000 Light Years From Home" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

The red-haired man fell silent for a minute enduring self-pity. Something wrecked about the face, I
thought; it fit.
He pulled his face together.
“First I’ll give you the only coherent observation of my entire evening. You can see it here at Big
Junction, always the same. Outside of the Procya, it’s humans with aliens, right? Very seldom aliens with
other aliens. Never aliens with humans. It’s the humans who want in.”
I nodded, but he wasn’t talking to me. His voice had a druggy fluency.
“Ah, yes, my Sellice. My first Sellice.”
“They aren’t really well-built, y’know, under those cloaks. No waist to speak of and short-legged.
But they flow when they walk.
“This one flowed out into the spotlight, cloaked to the ground in violet silk. You could only see a fall
of black hair and tassels over a narrow face like a vole. She was a mole-gray. They come in all colors,
their fur is like a flexible velvet all over; only the color changes startlingly around their eyes and lips and
other places. Erogenous zones? Ah, man, with them it’s not zones.
“She began to do what we’d call a dance, but it’s no dance, it’s their natural movement. Like
smiling, say, with us. The music built up, and her arms undulated toward me, letting the cloak fall apart
little by little. She was naked under it. The spotlight started to pick up her body markings moving in the
slit of the cloak. Her arms floated apart and I saw more and more.
“She was fantastically marked and the markings were writhing. Not like body paint—alive. Smiling,
that’s a good word for it. As if her whole body was smiling sexually, beckoning, winking, urging, pouting,
speaking to me. You’ve seen a classic Egyptian belly dance? Forget it—a sorry stiff thing compared to
what any Sellice can do. This one was ripe, near term.
“Her arms went up and those blazing lemon-colored curves pulsed, waved, everted, contracted,
throbbed, evolved unbelievably welcoming, inciting permutations. Come do it to me, do it, do it here
and here and here and now. You couldn’t see the rest of her, only a wicked flash of mouth. Every
human male in the room was aching to ram himself into that incredible body. I mean it was pain. Even the
other aliens were quiet, except one of the Sirians who was chewing out a waiter.
“I was a basket case before she was halfway through.... I won’t bore you with what happened next;
before it was over there were several fights and I got out. My money ran out on the third night. She was
gone next day.
“I didn’t have time to find out about the Sellice cycle then, mercifully. That came after I went back to
campus and discovered you had to have a degree in solid-state electronics to apply for off-planet work. I
was a pre-med but I got that degree. It only took me as far as First Junction then.
“Oh, god, First Junction. I thought I was in heaven—the alien ships coming in and our freighters
going out. I saw them all, all but the real exotics, the tankies. You only see a few of those a cycle, even
here. And the Yyeire. You’ve never seen that.
“Go home, boy. Go home to your version of Burned Barn....
“The first Yyek I saw I dropped everything and started walking after it like a starving hound, just
breathing. You’ve seen the pix of course. Like lost dreams. Man is in love and loves what vanishes....
It’s the scent, you can’t guess that. I followed until I ran into a slammed port. I spent half a cycle’s credits
sending the creature the wine they call stars’ tears.... Later I found out it was a male. That made no
difference at all.
“You can’t have sex with them, y’know. No way. They breed by light or something, no one knows
exactly. There’s a story about a man who got hold of a Yyeir woman and tried. They had him skinned.
Stories—”
He was starting to wander.
“What about that girl in the bar, did you see her again?”
He came back from somewhere.
“Oh, yes. I saw her. She’d been making it with the two Skians, y’know. The males do it in pairs.
Said to be the total sexual thing for a woman, if she can stand the damage from those beaks. I wouldn’t