"Edward L. Ferman - Best From F&SF, 23rd Edition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferman Edward L)

Like Nina, here.
Again Nolan looked down at the girl who lay curled beside him on the bed, silent and sated. She
wasn't sweating; her skin was curiously cool to the touch, and in her eyes was a mystery.
It was the mystery that Nolan had sensed the first time he saw her staring at him across the village
compound three days ago. At first he thought she was one of the company peopleтАФsomebody's wife,
daughter, sister. That afternoon, when he returned to the bungalow, he caught her staring at him again at
the edge of the clearing. So he asked Moises who she was, and Moises didn't know. Apparently she'd
just arrived a day or two before, paddling a crude catamaran downriver from somewhere out of the
denser jungle stretching a thousand miles beyond. She had no English, and according to Moises, she
didn't speak Spanish or Portuguese either. Not that she'd made any attempts to communicate; she kept
to herself, sleeping in the catamaran moored beside the bank across the river and not even venturing into
the company store by day to purchase food.
"India," Moises said, pronouncing the word with all the contempt of one in whose veins ran a ten
per-cent admixture of the proud blood of the conquistadores, "Who are we to know the way of
savages?" He shrugged.
Nolan had shrugged, too, and dismissed her from his mind. But that night as he lay on his bed,
listening to the pounding of the drums, he thought of her again and felt a stirring in his loins.
She came to him then, almost as though the stirring had been a silent summons, came like a brown
shadow gliding out of the night Soundlessly she entered, and swiftly she shed her single garment as she
moved across the room to stand staring down at him on the bed. Then, as she sank upon his nakedness
and encircled his thighs, the stirring in his loins became a throbbing and the pounding in his head drowned
out the drums.
In the morning she was gone, but on the following night she returned. It was then that he'd called her
NinaтАФit wasn't her name, but he felt a need to somehow identify this wide-mouthed, pink-tongued
stranger who slaked herself upon him, slaked his own urgency again and again as her hissing breath
rasped in his ears.
Once more she vanished while he slept, and he hadn't seen her all day. But at times he'd been
conscious of her secret stare, a coldness falling upon him like an unglimpsed shadow, and he'd known
that tonight she'd come again.
Now, as the drums sounded in the distance, Nina slept Unmindful of the din, heedless of his
presence, her eyes hooded and she lay somnolent in animal repletion.
Nolan shuddered. That's what she was; an animal. In repose, the lithe brown body was grotesquely
elongated, the wide mouth accentuating the ugliness of her face. How could he have coupled with this
creature? Nolan grimaced in self-disgust as he turned away.
Well, no matterтАФit was ended now, over once and for all. Today the message had arrived from
Belem: Darlene and Robbie were on the ship, ready for the flight to Manaos. Tomorrow morning he'd
start downriver to meet them, escort them here. He'd had his qualms about their coming; they'd have to
face three months hi this hellhole before the year was up, but Darlene had insisted.
And she was right Nolan knew it now. At least they'd be together and that would help see him
through. He wouldn't need the bottle any more, and he wouldn't need Nina.
Nolan lay back and waited for sleep to come, shutting out the sound of the drums, the sight of the
shadowy shape beside him. Only a few hours until morning, he told himself. And in the morning, the
nightmare would be over.
The trip to Manaos was an ordeal, but it ended in Darlene's arms. She was blonder and more
beautiful than he'd remembered, more loving and tender than he'd ever known her to be, and in the union
that was their reunion Nolan found fulfillment Of course there was none of the avid hunger of Nina's
coiling caresses, none of the mindless thrashing to final frenzy. But it didn't matter; the two of them were
together at last. The two of them, and Robbie.
Robbie was a revelation.
Nolan hadn't anticipated the intensity of his own reaction. But now, after the long trip back in the