"George R. R. Martin - With Morning Comes Mistfall (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

He looked at me, frowning. Finally he nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Maybe
you're right." He sighed. "But mistfall! Hell." There was a short silence,
then, "I need a drink. Join me?"
I nodded.
We wound up in the same dark corner as the first night, at what must
have been Sanders's favorite table. He put away three drinks before I had
finished my first. Big drinks. Everything in Castle Cloud was big.
There were no arguments this time. We talked about mistfall, and the
forests, and the ruins. We talked about the wraiths, and Sanders lovingly told
me the stories of

the great sightings. I knew them all already, of course. But not the way
Sanders told them.
At one point, I mentioned that I'd been born in Bradbury when my parents
were spending a short vacation on Mars. Sanders's eyes lit up at that, and he
spent the next hour or so regaling me with Earthman jokes. I'd heard them all
before, too. But I was getting more than a little drunk, and somehow they all
seemed hilarious.
After that night, I spent more time with Sanders than with anyone else
in the hotel. I thought I knew Wraithworld pretty well by that time. But that
was an empty conceit, and Sanders proved it. He showed me hidden spots in the
forests that have haunted me ever since. He took me to island swamps, where
the trees are of a very different sort and sway horribly without a wind. We
flew to the far worth, to another mountain range where the peaks are higher
and sheathed in ice, and to a southern plateau where the mists pour eternally
over the edge in a ghostly imitation of a waterfall.
I continued to write about Dubowski and his wraith hunt, of course. But
there was little new to write about, so most of my time was spent with
Sanders. I didn't worry too much about my output. My Wraithworld series had
gotten excellent play on Earth and most of the colony worlds, so I thought I
had it made.
Not so.
I'd been on Wraithworld just a little over three months when my
syndicate beamed me. A few systems away, a civil war had broken out on a
planet called New Refuge. They wanted me to cover it. No news was coming out
of Wraithworld anyway, they said, since Dubowski's expedition still had over a
year to run.
Much as I liked Wraithworld, I jumped at the chance. My stories had been
getting a little stale, and I was running out of ideas, and the New Refuge
thing sounded like it could be very big.
So I said good-bye to Sanders and Dubowski and
Castle Cloud, and took a last walk through the mist forests, and booked
passage on the next ship through.
The New Refuge civil war was a firecracker. I spent less than a month on
the planet, but it was a dreary month. The place had been colonized by
religious fanatics, but the original cult had schismed, and both sides accused
the other of heresy. It was all very dingy. The planet itself had all the
charm of a Martian suburb.
I moved on as quickly as I could, hopping from planet to planet, from
story to story. In six months, I had worked myself back to Earth. Elections