"Carol Emshwiller - Water Master" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emshwiller Carol)

Why is the Water Master up here at his look-out spot and without his pistols? You can't guard a dam
from here. Though so far there's only one man to guard it from. Except does he have a bomb?

We wait. No more men come up out of the fog. They must be far behind or maybe this man is the only
one. I wonder why they've sent him up here all by himself?

I know that man. I recognize him by his hatтАФbrown leather and with a shorter brim than most. I'm not
surprised they'd pick him to come up first. He's always the angriest about everything. I don't think I've
ever seen him not. The look in his eyes is what I used to think was in the Water Master's, and that that
was why the Water Master wouldn't look at anybody. Now I think the Water Master didn't look at
people because he thought he was ugly (which is true) and because of all those scars.

The man puts down the pistols and unhooks his rifle. Then he takes off his back pack, rummages inside it
and pulls out a package. He walks a little ways along the dam and sits on the edge with his legs hanging
over (just seeing him do that scares me) and eats his lunch.

Amos A. and I look at each other. He's so close this time and his sweaty arm still across my
shoulders.тАж I look away fast.

We're still in the shadow of the tree though the shadow has moved.
Amos Acularious takes his arm away and moves closer to the edge of the bluff we climbed. Out from
under the shadow of the tree he'll be visible from the dam, though I don't suppose the man will think to
look up here.

I study Amos A's back. How he has such a longish neck. There's something delicate about him,
(translucent like his tea cup) though I've felt his strength as he helped me climb.

The man has finished his lunch and is taking longish, tied together, red things out of his pack.

Amos Acularius says, "You sit tight."

Before I can think to answerтАФto shout, Don't! he's sliding down the slope in front of us as if it was a
long, long child's slide.

It took us twenty minutes to climb up here, but he's at the bottom in less than half a minute. I can't see
him because he's made a land slide. And he makes a racketтАФa swooshing, gravelly sound, and a great
cloud of dust.

I'm scared to jump off the edge and slide, but I'm not going to sit up here all by myself waiting and
watchingтАФmaybe watching bad things happening to Amos Acularius. Rocks are still coming down
behind him. I jump, anyway, shut my eyes and jump, into his landslide and make my own. I'm all the way
down before I have time to think about it.

It keeps on trickling down after our plunge. I can't see a thing. Then I finally make out Amos A. at the
edge of his dam, a grayish figure, his black clothes covered with dust.

I see the man look across at Amos. Amos A's arms are out at each side. The fringe hanging down all
along them makes him look, not only like a Water Master but master of all the gray granite. He's so dusty
he's like a part of the cliff we slid down.