"Sleator, William - Interstellar Pig 01 - Interstellar Pig 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sleator William)

The woman from next door was wearing a sleeveless lavender cotton dress, and her hair was pinned up into a bun, exposing her long slender neck. Now, face to face, she seemed much taller than she had at a distance, several inches taller than me.

A smile hovered around the edges of her wide mouth, and in the dim porch light her eyes seemed as deep a shade of lavender as her dress. "Hello, I'm from next door and I'm sorry to bother you like this," she said. I couldn't place her accent. "I feel terribly genante. It's just that we're trying to light a fire, and they don't seem to have provided us with any . . . what's the word? Oh, yes, tinder. We were wondering if you might have any surplus, which we could burn just for tonight. We'll be sure to repay you in full tomorrow." She didn't meet our eyes as she spoke, but peered around us, as if she
were trying to see as much as possible of the interior of our house.

"We have lots," Dad said. As he started for the fireplace she stepped quickly into the house, almost bumping into me in her haste to get a good look at the living room

"Good evening," Mom said, standing up and nodding pleasantly at the woman. "Barney, why don't you be a gentleman and carry the kindling over for her? Maybe they need some help settling in."

"Sure," I said, wondering what the matter was with Mom. Usually she would have been a little cold to a stranger barging in on us like this. Now she was actually sending me over to fraternize with the neighbors.

"Oh, thank you. And you wouldn't happen to have an extra one of those tide charts, by chance, would you?" the young woman asked, her gaze wandering toward the stairway.

"Yes, I'll get it," I said, forgetting to be shy.

She was looking at me now, and my eyes slid away from her. "That would be so gentle of you," she said warmly.

I got the tide chart, filled my arms with prickly kindling and pushed open the screen door. I waited while she remained inside for a long moment, then followed as she came striding out. In the darkness, the light from the cottage's picture window made a pale oblong on the sloping lawn. A crescent moon hung over the invisible black water.

"We're in fortune," the woman announced, holding open the screen door of the cottage as I stepped cautiously inside. Compared to the heavily curtained, overstuffed interior of the captain's

house, the main room of the cottage seemed empty and bleakЧbare white walls, gray linoleum floor, unmatching plastic furniture, with two metal floor lamps providing the harsh illumination. The men sat drinking wine at a wooden table in the center of the room. The debris of a meal had been pushed aside, and some kind of a game seemed to be in progress. A board had been set up on the table, with movable pieces and colored cards and envelopes. A succulent, spicy smell lingered.

"That's a bonanza," said the man with the brown mustache, getting up to accept the kindling. I was aware, as he came toward me, of how large and powerfully built he was. "Thanks extremely," he said and lifted the big load of kindling from my arms as though it were a couple of match sticks.

"Hi," said the man with the blond beard, who was slenderer than the other, but wiry. "Did you get inside?" he asked the woman. Then he said "Oops!" and gulped down some wine.

Three pairs of lavender eyes watched me curiously now. And at that moment I noticed, in the corner by the fireplace, a pile of kindling. Why had they lied about it and borrowed more from us? Their strangeness intrigued me. "Anything you'd like to know about the area?" I asked, wanting an excuse to stay. "Or maybe I'm interrupting your game?"

. "Of course you are, but please stay anyway," the woman said, smiling. "You're the only people around and we're wanting to find out about this quaint seacoast locale. Aren't we?"

"Yes, have some vino," said the blond man, reaching for the bottle.

"It's your tinder, stay and enjoy the fire," said the Other man, kneeling at the hearth.

"This dump might actually be almost cozy when we get the fire going," the woman said, wrapping her dark arms around her shoulders. She stared at me. "Sit down."

There was such authority and command in the way she spoke that I complied without thinking. What had happened to the petite, demure creature who had so coyly tried to cajole Ted to let them into our house? This person wouldn't have cajoled; she would have ordered. She seemed a different woman now, massive, brusque, in control. We sat close together around the fireplace. I could tell that they really weren't too much older than meЧthey seemed about college age. The two men were shirtless, their taut bodies as deeply tanned as the woman's. I knew they had just arrived, but they looked as though they'd been living on the beach for months,

Zena, Manny, and Joe were their names. Before starting their game, they had gone for a moonlight swim, which was why Zena was so eager for a fire. "The water's superb at night," said Joe, the big man with the mustache. "It seems like a different element in the moonlight, phosphorescent and glittering and alive."

"I've never been swimming at night," I said. "I'd love to go sometime."

"You get a nice frisson because you can't see underwater," Zena said. "So you always have the notion that there might be something lurking there, observing you, waiting to pursue you if you try to get away. It's rather like our game."

"What I like is ... you don't have to wear anything," said Manny, the blond man. He giggled.

"That's the natural and proper way to swim," Joe said.

"If only it didn't get so frigid at night," Zena said, shivering a little. "Though I never would have believed it this afternoon, when we were sitting in that filthy traffic jam. I felt like we were three eggs in beurre noire."