"Utley, Steven - The Despoblado" - читать интересную книгу автора (Utley Steven)

Vegetation on the floodplain gradually retreated from the land to the splash zones along either bank, exposing barren flatlands that stretched away to the horizon. The silvery phantom pools shimmering out on the baking white surfaces looked more inviting than the muddy water at hand.

Wicket occasionally replaced Walton in the pilothouse for substantial lengths of time, during which Walton might disappear below or needlessly inspect the cargo or simply watch the land as it rolled by. Whenever he passed near Moen or Michelle, which was as rarely as possible, he acknowledged their presence with a nod and tried not to make eye contact and to hurry on without seeming to hurry. Once, however, when he did inadvertently meet Moen's look, he was certain that he saw a glint of smugness in it, and he felt his eyebrows draw together. The reaction puzzled and annoyed him. What the hell does it matter to me, he thought fiercely, what these two get themselves into? Don't approve of shipboard romances or workplace romances, and here it's practically the same thing. He retreated quickly to the pilothouse and sent Wicket to do busywork.

He put the boat in close to shore for the evening. When the diesel engines were shut off, the silence was almost stunning. Wicket busied himself in the galley, filling the tiny space from side to side and front to back; he seemed to have room only for his hands, which worked expertly at transforming dried vegetables and meat bar into stew.

"You are welcome to join us for dinner," Walton said to Michelle, so stiffly that she visibly recoiled.

"We're having Walton's speciality," said Moen. "Meat bar in fusel oil."

"Thank you," she said, "but I brought my own food."

Moen grinned. "Coward."

She seemed to relax. "But if I can bring my veggie bars, I'd be delighted to sit with you."

There was little conversation at table, though. After dinner, the three of them paused on deck amid the quietude and watched the great cold moon's stately emergence from a vast bank of clouds. No mosquitoes vexed them. There were no insect noises, no frog choruses, no sounds at all but that of the backwash. There was not a breath of air. Wicket sat quietly by himself on a stack of pallets, reading a book by the light of a lantern.

Walton said, "Will you please read to me, Wicket?" The mate ducked his head sheepishly. "Please? No?" Walton gave Michelle an apologetic glance. "I like him to read to me before I turn in at night, butЧin front of company Е"

Before he retired, Walton showed Michelle where she could string a hammock. Moen, a frequent passenger, had a bunk belowdecks as well; he was still on deck with her, however, and the two of them were listening to music from a chip pack when Walton made to go below. He paused and listened and decided that it was one of Brahms's overtures, the Festival or the TragicЧit had been some time since he had heard either, and they always had tended to run together in his mind. The music was punctuated by laughter. Michelle Kelly had a rich, uninhibited laugh, but it had the effect of making Walton go to his bed muttering about foolish young women. But he suddenly knew, and was not surprised to know, that the real problem was jealousy, pure and simple, and both the knowledge and its unsurprising nature only made him angrier. Dammit, he told himself, I refuse to feel jealousy over some little thing who's half my age, if that. Before he fell asleep, however, he heard Moen come belowЧaloneЧand turn inЧaloneЧand, strangely gratified, he thought, Well, at least she's not a pushover.




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The following morning, everyone on the barge was awake and had eaten breakfast by the time the violet sky began to lighten. Even as they watched, that quadrant faded to a deep-sea blue, streaks of rust-colored clouds appeared low above a backlit irregular line of highlands far to the east, and then the filmiest hint of pink suffused the sky behind the clouds. But for that glimpse of distant hills it would have been impossible to say that the land was rising before them, and as the sun continued its swift ascent the highlands faded and blended into the indefinite demarcation of earth and sky.
As they moved upriver, Michelle pointed out a small fish swimming at the surface. "Spiny shark," she said.

Moen peered over the side. "There're sharks here?"

"That seems to be the standard reaction. These are freshwater spiny sharks. Merry Grenon showed me a dead one at the base camp yesterday. She told me the scientific name, but I don't think I can pronounce it right."

They reached the oil geologists' camp before noon. It consisted of a few tents and an area marked off as a helipad, and total present population evidently comprised three more or less sunburnt men. Two were dressed in old clothes; the third, wearing only boxer shorts and boots, darted into a tent when he saw Michelle and promptly re-emerged wearing a more nearly complete ensemble. Moen displayed his previous particularity about his crates, and this time Wicket appeared to heed his instructions during the unloading. Then, laughing, boyishly happy, Moen personally drove the vibrator truck onto the bank, leaving deep tracks in the loose, crumbly marl. He invited Walton and Michelle to stay for dinner, and they accepted. Wicket's exclusion seemed to Michelle to be taken as a given.

Moen was clearly in charge and in his element. The camp's working day ended when he said so. This, as it turned out, was an hour before sundown, which gave the junior member of the geology team, a sweating red-faced man named Bloodworth, little time to wash up and prepare some kind of mealЧ"for up to a dozen people," Moen explained, "depending on whether the helicopter's brought some in or taken some out"Чand seemed to leave Moen himself and his guests barely enough time to wash up and have drinks in hand when the edge of the sun dipped behind the far edge of the world. They sat with the other two members of Moen's crew, Dews and McCampbell, at a long camp table in the mess tent; the tent flaps were turned back so that they could watch the sun set.

"All I want out of life," Moen said as the harried Bloodworth placed a steaming tureen on the table, "is to be able to sip good whiskey and watch spectacular sunsets. No, actually, I want a good deal else. I want this team to produce the results I want to take back to my bosses. I want to be ten times richer than I am and ten years younger than I am, and to weigh ten pounds less than I do. I want to have back all the hair I've lost." He paused as Bloodworth set dinner before him. "I want a decent meal." He regarded the food. "Meat bar in fusel oil," he said, "my favorite," and laughed.

Bloodworth looked apologetic and backed away. Dinner was eaten with a minimum of talk, most of it having to do with the arcana of oil geology. Michelle dutifully chewed overcooked reconstituted vegetables and made no attempt to join in the conversation, nor did Moen's men make any attempt to draw her into it. It was obvious to Walton that she was conscious of the appraising looks they gave her whenever they thought she was not looking. Moen seemed thoroughly amused by the effect she was having on them.


My responsibility ends at the gangplank, Walton thought, and forced his attention to his food. He ate with such resolute single-mindedness that a second or two elapsed before he realized that the conversation had suddenly and unexpectedly taken a combative turn, that Dews had said something to which Michelle objected; he looked up and saw her regarding Dews piercingly, saw Dews return her look with one of happy belligerence, heard Moen say blandly, "Dews, I don't think our young guest approves of any of thisЧdo you, Miz Kelly?"

"I don't. Call me an eco-maniac, but I don't like the idea of raiding the past to keep the present going. A lot of people don't."

Dews leaned back in his chair and knitted his blunt red fingers over his midsection; Michelle did not flinch from his gaze. "The quantum-mechanics boys," he drawled, "say we haven't traveled into our own Earth's prehistoric past at all. They say there must be duplicate Earths, parallel EarthsЧeach more or less different from our own. So nothing we do here can make any difference in our own timeline."