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

"I do?" I said. "Funny. It seems to me like you're I the ones who've been asking me questions all eve- ! ning." j

"You know what?" Zena said abruptly. "All of a j sudden I have a powerful nagging itch to get back j to the game. How about it?" :

"Nice," Manny said. "I always want to play the game."

They turned on the lights, pulled their chairs up to the table and sat down around the board I had noticed when I first came in. They hadn't asked me to play, so I stood behind Zena and looked down at it. It was the first chance I had had to study it, and I saw now that it was not like any board game I had even encountered before.

"Hey, what game is this, anyway?" I asked, beginning to feel extremely excited. It seemed to be a space fantasy, with dreamlike, but detailed, planets. "I love games, but I've never seen anything like this. Where on earth did you get it?"

There was a moment of silence. Then Zena said, "It's a very new game. I suppose it isn't even on the market yet. It's still being . . . uh, what's the word? . . . Consumer tested, that's it."

"How did you get your hands on it then?"

"Because ..."

"Because we ... encountered somebody in the business," Joe explained. "He borrowed us an advance set."

"It was the best event that ever happened to us," Manny said with conviction.

"It's a noble game," Joe said. "We've been playing it every night, and we still can't wrench ourselves away from it."

"But what's it called?" I asked again. "How do you play it?" I reached down to pick up one of the pieces.

"Don't touch, you'll distress it!" Zena slapped my hand a lot harder than seemed necessary.

"Questions, questions, questions," Joe murmured.

"But can't you just tell me the name of it?" I said, feeling a bit wounded.

"It's called Interstellar Pig," Zena said tartly. "We'd ask you to play, but we're in the middle of a three-person game. Perhaps another time."

Time! I had forgotten about it completely. How long had I been here? If I outstayed my welcome they might think I was a pest, and wouldn't take me along on any expeditions, "Well, it's probably time for me to go," I said. "But I would love to play it sometime."

"Uh-huh," Zena murmured, staring down at the board. She moved her piece. "Hyperspace tunnel!" she announced triumphantly. "I'm going straight to Vavoosh."

They seemed to have forgotten I was there.

Mom and Dad were extremely curious about the neighbors, and dissatisfied by what I had to tell them. I'd been there for several hours, and yet I'd found out almost nothing about them. Mom and Dad quizzed me about their ages, their professions, their financial status, their relationships with one another, and where they came from. All I knew were their first names, that they traveled a lot and were addicted to Interstellar Pig.

"I'm surprised at you, Barney," Mom said. "You're usually so inquisitive."

And I was surprised at Mom and Dad. The neighbors were much younger than they were and had no obvious social position. Yet, for some reason, they were fascinated by them. It wasn't like them at all.

I looked carefully at the marks around the windows in my room that night. There was no message of any sort, only random wounds etched into the

wood. When I got into bed, the scars, by some trick of the lamplight, emerged in sharp relief, like welts. I couldn't concentrate on my book, and turned out the light. The wheezing and gasping of the bedsprings as I tried to find a comfortable position made me think of an old man struggling to breathe. I assured myself that, ancient though it was, this could not possibly be the bed in which the prisoner had slept.

And if his ghost remained, it was too feeble a specter even to materialize in my dreams. It was Zena I dreamed of, leading me by the hand across the floor of a gigantic arena. It was patterned, like their game, with the images of planets and stars, and curving pathways of light. Zena was telling me over and over again something I could not grasp, something terribly important, of great beauty and significance.