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

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

14

INTERSTELLAR PIG

INTERSTELLAR PIG

15

"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 meтАФthey 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."

"Not butter! Rancid diesel oil would be more like it. Wonder what that would
taste like."