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

"Well then," I finally said. "Come on in."



I offered her some sweetcake I'd fried up, and some beer that my neighbor, Shin,
had brought by, both of which she declined. We sat in the living room, on
furniture covered with the white sheets I had yet to remove. Bex and I took it
slow, getting to know each other again. She ran her father's place now. For
years, the only way to get to Heidel was by freighter, but we had finally gotten
a node on the Flash, and, even though Ferro was still a backwater planet, there
were more strangers passing through than there ever had been нн usually en route
to other places. But they sometimes stayed a night or two in the Bexter Hotel.
Its reputation was spreading, Bex claimed, and I believed her. Even when she was
young, she had been shrewd but honest, a combination you don't often find in an
inn-keeper. She was a quiet woman нн that is, until she got to know you well нн
and some most likely thought her conceited. I got the feeling that she hadn't
let down her reserve for a long time. When I knew her before, Bex did not have
many close friends, but for the ones she had, such as me, she poured out her
thoughts, and her heart. I found that she hadn't changed much in that way.
"Did you marry?" I asked her, after hearing about the hotel and her father's bad
health.
"No," she said. "No, I very nearly did, but then I did not. Did you?"
"No. Who was it?"
"Rall Kenton."
"Rall Kenton? Rall Kenton whose parents run the hops market?" He was a
quarter-splice, a tall man on a world of tall men. Yet, when I knew him, his
long shadow had been deceptive. There was no spark or force in him. "I can't see
that, Bex."
"Tom Kenton died ten years ago," she said. "Marjorie retired, and Rall owned the
business until just last year. Rall did all right; you'd be surprised. Something
about his father's passing gave him a backbone. Too much of one, maybe."
"What happened?"
"He died," she said. "He died, too, just as I thought you had." Now she told me
she would like a beer after all, and I went to get her a bottle of Shin's ale.
When I returned, I could tell that she'd been crying a little.
"The glims killed Rall," said Bex, before I could ask her about him. "That's
their name for themselves, anyway. Humans, repons, kaliwaks and I don't know
what else. They passed through last year and stayed for a week in Heidel. Very
bad. They made my father give over the whole hotel to them, and then they had a
... trial, they called it. Every house was called and made to pay a tithe. The
glims decided how much. Rall refused to pay. He brought along a pistol нн Lord
knows where he got it нн and tried to shoot one of them. They just laughed and
took it from him." Now the tears started again.
"And then they hauled him out into the street in front of the hotel." Bex took a
moment and got control of herself. "They burnt him up with a p-gun. Burned his
legs off first, then his arms, then the rest of him after they'd let him lie
there awhile. There wasn't a trace of him after that; we couldn't even bury
him."
I couldn't take her to me, hold her, not after she'd told me about Rall. Needing
something to do, I took some tangled banwood from the tinder box and struggled