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

"How about excursion vessels, sightseers?"

"They don't come right around here." I was glad to be able to tell them so much. My familiarity with the area, limited as it was, might give them a reason for wanting to spend some time with me. "But there are several excursion boats out of Dun-

stable. Whale watches and dolphin watches and things. Would you like to go some day?"

"Love to," Manny said, with a funny little smile. "Joe adores dolphins. Don't you, Joe?"

"Yes. And octopi, too," Joe said.

Zena put her hand over her mouth and giggled like a little girl.

"They do any octopus fishing around here?" Joe went on, grinning at Manny now. "They do in some Greek settlements, I know. Remember Greece, Manny?"

"Oh, the way they bashed their poor little heads against the rocks, and left them out in the sun to dry!" Manny cried, rolling his eyes, "A sight I shall never forget!"

They were all laughing again. I didn't understand their secret joke, but I was amused by the way they were enjoying it. The enthusiasm with which they approached almost everythingЧespecially their precious gameЧwas appealing. They were younger and more playful than any adults I knew. And the amazing thing was, they continued to seem interested in me, and everything I had to say, asking lots of questions. They seemed fascinated by what I said about our house, absorbed and curiously motionless while I told them the story about the captain and his brother. I answered in detail their question about the layout of the house and spent a lot of time describing the front bedroom, where I had been sleeping for the past week.

"Still, as nice as the view is, I wouldn't want to

be locked up there for twenty years," I said.

;,г They had turned out the floor lamps. In the

ibadowy, firelit room, Zena's eyes glittered like a

Ijjft. "And the scratches Ted informed you about,

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INTCRSTELiAR PIG

were you able to discover them?" she asked, leaning toward me, her voice a gentle purr.

"Oh, sure. There's a lot of them, and some of them are deep, deeper than you'd think a person could make with his bare hands. He must have . . . spent a lot of time making them."

"And did they seem to fall into a kind of pattern or ... or tell a tale or anything?" Zena asked.

"No. They're completely senseless."

"I don't suppose there was anything else, uh . . . unusual about the chamber, was there?" Zena said carefully. "Nothing odd, peculiar, that you or your parents might have stumbled on?"

It was a strange question, and I tried to make a joke out of it. "You mean like a dead body, or a ghost or something? Uh-uh. No such luck."

But they didn't seem to appreciate my wit. Barely moving their heads, their eyes met; three pairs of eyes meeting equally somehow, as though there were only two of them. And I thought of the jagged pits and troughs in the windowsills of my room, and I felt uneasy for the first time. A curtain flapped gently at the window. The others in the room remained as still as reptiles in the sun.

"So you travel a lot?" I said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "That must be great. Where's your home base? What was your last trip?" :

"You certainly do ask a plethora of questions," Manny said.