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

and demonstrate what feet are for.
We'll brew some psilophytic tea
and make love by the Tethys Sea.
Moen laughed again as the song ended. "I bet there's not a trucker or a waitress in a hundred who knows what the hell it's even about."

"Course they will," McCampbell said. "It's about having sex in the great outdoors."

Michelle gestured with the chip pack. "Want to hear it in some other style?"

"Once is enough," Dews muttered.

Moen gave Michelle a sidelong look and asked, "What other delights've you got in that little box of yours?"

Walton flushed and frowned, and though he looked at Moen when he spoke, he clearly meant his words for Michelle. "I don't want to be a party-pooper, but I have to get an early start tomorrow. We'reЧI'm on a tight schedule."

Michelle leaned back in her seat, looked first at Walton, then at Moen. She slipped the chip pack back into her shirt pocket. She looked around the table and said, "It's been nice meeting you fellows."

"Come back any time," McCampbell ventured jocosely, "and bring your girlfriends."

"Listen to you," Michelle said as she stood up. "Wouldn't it be more fun if you had some women geologists here all the time?"

"Yep," McCampbell conceded, "even if they were tree-huggers. Maybe especially if they were tree-huggers."

Michelle gave him a look of politest inquiry.

McCampbell said, "Gal who'll hug a tree'll hug anything," and laughed uproariously. After a moment, Dews followed his lead. Bloodworth joined in, but halfheartedly. Moen smiled thinly.

Walton rose and nodded to Moen, whose smile was suddenly replaced by a disappointed and slightly desperate expression; the geologist almost overturned his own chair as he pushed to his feet. Walton cast a final look around the table, let his gaze rest for a moment on the grinning McCampbell, and murmured, "Gentlemen." As he turned away, he heard Moen utter Michelle's name, but without waiting to see if she would follow he began walking toward the river. He felt embarrassed and angry and vaguely unclean.

He did not look back until he had reboarded the barge, and he had no sooner done so than he saw her emerge from darkness into the light of Karen's lamps, looking as cool and casual as though she had been for a stroll around the block. Moen trailed one or two paces behind her with the air of someone trying to salvage an unexpectedly and rapidly deteriorating situation. She turned at the gangplank and told him gaily, "Thank you for a perfectly lovely evening," and came on board, and as she passed Walton she called out, "Perhaps we'll have time to visit again on the way back downriver."

Moen wilted on the bank. He did not set his foot on the gangplank. "Well," he said. "I guess I should say good night."

"Good night," she said, and Walton seconded her. The geologist smiled wanly and went back to his camp.

"I thought you might be thinking of spending the night ashore," Walton told Michelle in an even tone, without quite looking at her.

"So did he. In fact, I believe he had his whole weekend planned out. Straight-ahead romantic plunge on a boat, followed by hours of grunting and bucking. I guess setting me and Dews on each other was his idea of foreplay." She had plainly meant for him to laugh or at least smile.

Walton did not respond; he still would not look at her. "If you don't mind my asking, what're your plans for when we get back to the base camp? All I do is come upriver and go downriver. Occasionally, I hug the coast to Wegener Point and back, but not anytime soon."

The edge in his voice was matched in hers. "I might try to hitch a ride to someplace else. Or I could just walk."

"Walk? Walk where?"

Her tone became defiant. "Wegener Point's only about a hundred klicks north of the base camp, right? Stinktown's another few hundred."

"But walk?"

She raised a foot and waggled it for a moment. "I may've grown up in car culture, but I know what these things on the end of my legs are for. If hiking through hills and canyons in southern California didn't prepare meЧ"