"Daniel, Tony - A Dry, Quiet War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniel Tony)

A Dry, Quiet War
by
Tony Daniel




I cannot tell you what it meant to me to see the two suns of Ferro set behind
the dry mountain east of my home. I had been away twelve billion years. I passed
my cabin, to the pump well and, taking a metal cup from where it hung from a
set-pin, I worked the handle three times. At first it creaked, and I believed it
was rusted tight, but then it loosened, and within fifteen pulls, I had a cup of
water.
Someone had kept the pump up. Someone had seen to the house and the land while I
was away at the war. For me, it had been fifteen years; I wasn't sure how long
it had been for Ferro. The water was tinged red and tasted of iron. Good. I
drank it down in a long draught, then put the cup back onto its hanger. When the
big sun, Hemingway, set, a slight breeze kicked up. Then Fitzgerald went down
and a cold, cloudless night spanked down onto the plateau. I shivered a little,
adjusted my internals, and stood motionless, waiting for the last of twilight to
pass, and the stars нн my stars нн to come out. Steiner, the planet that is
Ferro's evening star, was the first to emerge, low in the west, methane blue.
Then the constellations. Ngal. Gilgamesh. The Big Snake, half-coiled over the
southwestern horizon. There was no moon tonight. There was never a moon on
Ferro, and that was right.
After a time, I walked to the house, climbed up the porch and the house
recognized me and turned on the lights. I went inside. The place was dusty, the
furniture covered with sheets, but there were no signs of rats or jinjas, and
all seemed in repair. I sighed, blinked, tried to feel something. Too early,
probably. I started to take a covering from a chair, then let it be. I went to
the kitchen and checked the cupboard. An old malt whisky bottle, some dry
cereal, some spices. The spices had been my mother's, and I seldom used them
before I left for the end of time. I considered that the whisky might be
perfectly aged by now. But, as the saying goes on Ferro, we like a bit of food
with our drink, so I left the house and took the road to town, to Heidel.
It was a five mile walk, and though I could have enhanced and covered the ground
in ten minutes or so, I walked at a regular pace under my homeworld stars. The
road was dirt, of course, and my pant legs were dusted red when I stopped under
the outside light of Thredmartin's Pub. I took a last breath of cold air, then
went inside to the warm.
It was a good night at Thredmartin's. There were men and women gathered around
the fire hearth, usas and splices in the cold corners. The regulars were at the
bar, a couple of whom I recognized нн so old now, wizened like stored apples in
a barrel. I looked around for a particular face, but she was not there. A
jukebox sputtered some core-cloud deak and the air was thick with smoke and
conversation. Or was, until I walked in. Nobody turned to face me. Most of them
couldn't have seen me. But a signal passed and conversation fell to quiet
murmur. Somebody quickly killed the jukebox.
I blinked up an internals menu into my peripheral vision and adjusted to the
room's temperature. Then I went to the edge of the bar. The room got even more