"Kate Wilhelm - The Girl Who Fell into the Sky" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

hour later she was on the interstate again, heading for the
rendezvous with her sister and her sisterтАЩs husband at the house he
had inherited from an uncle he had never met. She hiked her cotton
skirt up to her thighs as she drove; the wind rushed through the
little car screeching maniacally, and all around her the world
turned into a corn field as far as she could see. She loved it.
What she had not reckoned with, she realized later, was the
lowering sun. The sky remained cloudless, clear, pale, sun-bleached
to invisibility ahead, a great white nothingness with an intolerable
glare at its heart. And she had been right about the motels filling
up. By seven when she would have admitted her mistake, there was
nothing to be found. Doggedly she drove on into the glare, looking
forward to each oasis of gas station, restaurant, sometimes a motel,
all huddled together as if pressured by the corn that would have
reclaimed even those spots. Finally the sun fell out of the sky,
vanished without a hint of sunset. It was there, then it was not
there and the sky came back, violet turning into a deep purple
faster than she would have thought possible. At Goodland she made
her last stop. It was ten thirty; nothing was open except a gas
station. She got more water, filled her gas tank and consulted the
notes she had made when she talked to her sister two weeks ago,
recalled the instructions: тАЬAs soon as you get on the road heading
south, watch the odometer; itтАЩs exactly fourteen point six miles to
the turn-off. Then itтАЩs exactly four miles to the house. Mr.
MacLaren said the key will be taped to the underside of the kitchen
window around the back of the house. He said you canтАЩt miss it. So,
if you get there first, go on inside and make yourself at home. The
electricity will be on; thereтАЩs well water, everything you need, even
beds and bedding. See you soon, honey.тАЭ
The gas-station attendant had said it was cooling off good, wasnтАЩt
it, and she had thought he was making a joke, but now, heading
south finally, she took a deep breath and another. It was cooling off
a bit. The countryside was totally dark; no light showed anywhere,
only her headlights on the strip of state road ever rushing toward
her. After the traffic of the interstate, the roar of passing trucks,
the uncountable trucks pulling trailers, the vans and station
wagons and motorcycles, she felt suddenly as if she were completely
alone. She felt tension seeping out through her pores and had not
known until now that she had become tense in the long day of
interstate driving.
Without the explicit directions she never would have found the
turn-off. Even knowing it was there, at fourteen point six miles, she
would not have found it without coming to a complete stop, backing
up a hundred feet and approaching again, straining to see another
road. The road she finally found was dirt.
Gingerly she turned onto it and suddenly the land changed,
became hilly. She had grown so used to the corn-covered tabletop
land that she hit the brake hard when the dirt road began to go
downhill. She eased off the brake and slowly rolled forward. The
road was narrow, white under her lights, hard-packed, not really