"Alan Dean Foster - Lost and Found" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

the window, he put the Durango back in drive and resumed his own less fiery descent. He was thirsty, he
was hungry, and if he was real lucky, he mused, he might find someone with whom to strike up a
conversation. While he did not think that likely to involve the latest forward projections for pineapple
juice concentrate or frozen bacon, he was perfectly willing to talk politics, sports, or anything else. Even
in Bug Jump.

Twenty minutes later, the lights of the optimistically self-categorized town appeared below him. Soon he
was pulling up outside the single bar-restaurant. A mix of country music and broad-spectrum pop
filtered out over the unpaved parking area; the only rap to be found here being on the food. Mother Earth
had long since sucked down the original layer of gravel that had once covered the lot. In the absence of
rain the uneven, washboarded surface onto which he stepped was as hard as concrete.

It was Friday night, and Bug Jump was jumpinтАЩ. Besides his rented Durango, there were more than a
dozen other vehicles parked haphazardly around the lot. No cars: only SUVs, pickups, and a couple of
sorely used dirt bikes.

Stepping up onto the raised cement sidewalk that flanked the townтАЩs only street, he pushed through the
outer glass door, walked through the insulated double entryway, and then pushed through the second.
His senses were instantly assaulted by a mountain m├йlange of pumped-up music, loud conversation,
raucous laughter, fried food, and pool cues brutalizing orbs of imitation ivory on a felt field of play.
Their perfectly round glass eyes as dead and black as those of great white sharks, the cranial components
of violently demised ungulates gazed blankly at each other from opposing walls. There was also a bear
head, its petrified jaws parted in a rictus of false fury; old metal traps stained with the rust and blood of
years and furry critters past; brightly illuminated animated beer advertisements that in a thousand years
would no doubt be regarded by awed historians as great works of art; car license plates from other states
gnawed through by rust and time; and much other well-traveled detritus.

Though the rapidly falling temperature of the air outside only whispered of approaching autumn,
Bunyanesque lengths of amputated oak crackled for attention within the Stygian depths of a corner
fireplace fashioned of hand-laid river rock. In a mutually destructive seppuku of air and wood, reflected
flames danced off the insides of triple-paned windows that looked out on the parking lot, vehicles, big
trees, and mountain slopes beyond.

No one paid him the slightest attention as he sauntered toward the bar. As a trader whose work
sometimes took him overseas, he knew how to blend in with the natives. Though he would never be able
to pass for a local, after five days up at the lake his flannel shirt, cheap jeans, and hiking boots were
suitably soiled.


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 LostandFound


тАЬStoli on the rocks,тАЭ he told the jaded woman behind the bar. She looked, as he had once heard a visiting
Texas trader say about another lady, as if she had been rode hard and put up wet. But his drink arrived as
fast as one in any fancy drinking establishment in the Loop, and was more honest.

As he sat on his chosen stool and sipped, he contemplated the milling throng with the quiet, self-
contained detachment of a visiting anthropologist. There didnтАЩt seem to be many other vacationers. Too
late in the season, perhaps, what with the local school districts now back in session and the onset of