"Jeff VanderMeer - Three Days in a Border Town" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vandermeer Jeff)

your people needed a small army, to protect it against those marauders who might want to take it for
themselves. You served in that army, while Delorn worked as a farmer, helping pick dates, planting
vegetable seeds, fine-tuning the irrigation ditches.

You were in surveillance and sharp-shooting. You could handle a gun as well as anyone in the town.
After a time, they put you in charge of a small band of other sharp shooters. No one ever came to steal
the land because the town was too well-prepared. Near the waterhole, your people had long ago found a
stockpile of old weapons. Most of them worked. These weapons served as a deterrent.

Delorn and you had your own small home -- three rooms that were part of his parents' compound, at the
edge of town. From your window, you could see the watchfires at night, from the perimeter. Some
nights, you watched your house from that perimeter. On those nights, the air seemed especially cold as
the desert receded further from the heat of the day.

When you came home, you would crawl into bed next to Delorn and bring yourself close to his body
heat. He always ran hot; you could always use him as hedge against the cold.



So you float like a ghost again. You let your footfalls be the barometer of your progress, and release the
idea of solitude or no solitude.

As night approaches, you become convinced for a moment that the town is a mirage, and all the people
in it. If so, you still have water in your backpack. You can make it another few days without a border
town. But can you make it without company? The thirst for contact. The desiccation of only hearing your
own voice.

Someone catches your eye -- a messenger or courier, perhaps -- weaving his way among the others like
sinuous snake, clearly with a destination in mind. The movement is unique for a place so calm, so
measured.

You stand in front of him, force him to stop or run into you. He stops. You regard each other for a
moment.

He is all tufts of black hair and dark skin and startling blue eyes. A pretty chin. A firm mouth. He could
be thirty or forty-five. It's hard to tell. What did he think of you?

"You come out of the desert," he says in his patois, which you can just understand. "The sentinel told us.
But he also said he thought you might be a ghost. You're not a ghost."

How had the sentinel told them already? But it doesn't matter...

"Could a ghost do this," you say, and pinch his cheek. You smile to reassure him.

People are staring.

He rubs his cheek. His hands are much paler than his face.

"Maybe," he says. "Ghosts from the desert can do many things."