Читать книгу The Twenty-Third Century: Nontraditional Love онлайн

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Daniel and I, although our beds were right next to each other, naturally slept apart. In order to give the child a reasonable explanation as to why we could not take him into our bed, we lied that we were suffering from a skin disease that was outwardly invisible. The touch of a foreign body would irritate the meninx and cause skin cancer.

“And what is ‘skin cancer’?” the boy asked incredulously.

I had to give him a confused explanation.

“That’s a bad disease. They have to give you lots of shots. You don’t like it when they prick you in the fanny.”

“No I don’t,” Victor confirmed, and he prepared to shed a tear just in case.

I distracted him with a new computer game, but my efforts were in vain; the next day when he came in from the kindergarten, he gave me the next round of childish questions.

“How can you hold me in your arms? Won’t you get sick? Won’t you die?”

“No,” I assured the boy. “Until you reach the age of five, I can take you in my arms without any worries. But you need to sleep in your own bed.”