"Onopa-Camping" - читать интересную книгу автора (Onopa Robert)

he brought this on himself? Was life wonderful or what?

"'Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.'" He smiled when she
returned.

"'Tintern Abbey' again." She grinned. "William to Doroths. This is going to be
fun."

So precisely at ten that late summer morning the Interactive Ranger Terminal
inspected Ghia's permit, certified their Emergency Position Locating Devices,
scanned and approved their shoes, then propelled them through the gate. Max
stepped behind her down the trail -- the IR Terminal's last audio was a warning
that it was paved only for the first kilometer. On the upslope a wall of pink
heliconia defined the route m a disciplined rank of plants so healthy they
looked artificial. Downslope beyond a rock wall the pall fell away dramatically
over a paradise of flowering trees and vines and half-hidden waterfalls. They
seemed to be floating in mid-air in a dream of Eden.

Though Max was having second thoughts. He hadn't actually seen Ghia again until
they'd met at the big Lihue jetport after separate flights from the mainland. It
had been one thing to bathe in the envy of other middle-aged men (hair thinning
just like his) as they'd watched him pair up with an attractive young woman,
quite another to assume she'd really brought him here to snuggle in her tent and
do the nasty.

Yet hadn't she called two weeks before to remind him about his flight time
wearing only a fetching mini-jumpsuit? Hadn't she spent longer than necessary
brushing his clothes for possible alien seeds as they'd waited at the trailhead?
Hadn't she even seed-combed his hair, stroking slowly, twirling strands around
her fingers? They'd groom ed each other, now that he thought about it, like
animals about to mate. Hadn't they? "Ghia," Max began, shifting the sixty pound
pack on his back, "I think we need to get something straight."

She turned to him clear-eyed and smiling uncertainly at the hitch in his voice.

He lost it again, and blushed, unable to be direct; he'd been born in the wrong
century, he supposed. "You, uh, could have hiked with a younger friend," he
found himself saying.

"It's you I want to be with." She shrugged shyly, running her hand along a tall
row of erect leaves.

Among them were flowers, orange and red, parrot-colored, shaped like beaks under
feathery hats: Birds of Paradise, the first he'd ever seen. Yet something in the
rank of foliage bothered him. "Say, if we're in the wilderness, why are these
flowers in such a straight line?"

"We were talking about us?"

"Sorry. I guess we have to get beyond the paved part of the trail to see, uh,