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

happens. The wraiths are famous, and my readers are interested. So I've got no
opinions. Or none that I'd care to broadcast, anyway."
Sanders lapsed into a disgruntled silence, and attacked his ham and eggs
with a renewed vigor. Dubowski took over for him, and steered the conversation
over to the details of the investigation he was planning. The rest of the meal
was a montage of eager talk about wraith traps, and search plans, and
roboprobes, and sensors. I listened carefully and took mental notes for a
column on the subject.
Sanders listened carefully, too. But you could tell from his face that
he was far from pleased by what he heard.
Nothing much else happened that day. Dubowski spent his time at the
spacefield, built on a small plateau below the castle, and supervised the
unloading of his equipment. I wrote a column on his plans for the expedition,
and beamed it back to Earth. Sanders tended to his other guests, and did
whatever else a hotel manager does, I guess.
I went out to the balcony again at sunset, to watch the mists rise.
It was war, as Sanders had said. At mistfall, I had

seen the sun victorious in the first of the daily battles. But now the
conflict was renewed. The mists began to ` creep back to the heights as the
temperature fell. Wispy gray-white tendrils stole up silently from the
valleys, and curled around the jagged mountain peaks like ghostly fingers.
Then the fingers began to grow thicker and stronger, and after a while they
pulled the mists up, after them.
One by one the stark, wind-carved summits were swallowed up for another
night. The Red Ghost, the giant to the north, was the last mountain to vanish
in , the lapping white ocean. And then the mists began to pour in over the
balcony ledge, and close around Castle Cloud itself.
I went back inside. Sanders was standing there, just inside the doors.
He had been watching me.
"You were right," I said. "It was beautiful."
He nodded. "You know, I don't think Dubowski has , bothered to look
yet," he said.
"Busy, I guess."
Sanders sighed. "Too damn busy. C'mon. I'll buy :: you a drink."
The hotel bar was quiet and dark, with the kind of mood that promotes
good talk and serious drinking. The more I saw of Sanders' castle, the more I
liked the man. Our tastes were in remarkable accord.
We found a table in the darkest and most secluded part of the room, and
ordered drinks from a stock that included liquors from a dozen worlds. And we
talked.
"You don't seem very happy to have Dubowski here," I said after the
drinks came. "Why not? He's filling up your hotel."
Sanders looked up from his drink, and smiled "True. It is the slow
season. But I don't like what he's trying to do."
"So you try to scare him away?" _
Sanders' smile vanished. "Was I that transparent?"
I nodded.
He sighed. "Didn't think it would work," he said. He sipped thoughtfully
at his drink. "But I had to try something."