"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Infernal Sky (english)" - читать интересную книгу автора

start if I'm ever turned into a zombie.
I know it's wrong to worry about my appearance
when I could have been blind for the rest of my life.
May God forgive my vanity.
Arlene won't let me be sorry for myself. She bent
over my hospital bed, smiling like an angel, and
kissed up and down the tortured flesh of my disfig-
ured face. "You'll always be my Albert," she whis-
pered so that only I could hear.
We've shared experiences few mortals will ever
know. We've faced down the wrath of a spider-mind.
We've tasted the brimstone of a fire eater. (I can't
figure out why the scientists here call those things
arch-viles.) Together we've spilled the slimy guts of
pumpkins and princes of hell. I was willing to wade
through a sea of blood with this woman. But when she
turned her face to me and offered me her high
cheekbones to touch and her full mouth to kiss, I
pulled away.
She must think I'm a fool. A woman who has
proved herself in a world of men, she is not squeam-
ish about the human body. Women tend to be more
matter-of-fact about the body anyway. They already
live in the sea of blood so it must seem very strange to
watch men deliberately embark upon that crimson
ocean. Does a foxhole really compare to childbirth? I
was brought up to believe that the highest destiny of a
woman is to bring children into the world. The church
reinforced these attitudes. I can respect a woman who
is a fighter but I can't shake the idea she's shirking her
responsibility as a woman. It's like if she dies on a
battlefield, she gets off easy. If she's an officer, she
exercises a trivial kind of authority compared to what
God intends for her to do with her children.
So here comes Arlene Sanders with her high-and-
tight, tossing back her head as if she had long hair
down to her waist, showing off her long neck and firm
jaw, and shouldering her piece with as much authority
as any man. Yeah, I'll pretend it's the day after
Halloween and help her blow away pumpkins. But I
won't touch her with my naked hand.
Intellectually, I don't doubt the Book of Mormon.
History shows that a life of marriage and children is
intended for men and women on this earth. When we
move away from that, we become miserable. When we
do our duty, we know a happiness of which no
hedonist can even dream.
I guess my problem is that I thought I'd been
tempted before. But the women who offered them-
selves to me for quick and easy sex were not women I