"Tony Daniel - A Dry, Quiet War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniel Tony)

road was dirt, of course, and my pant legs were dusted red when I stopped
under
the outside light of Thredmartin's Pub. I took a last breath of cold air,
then
went inside to the warm.
It was a good night at Thredmartin's. There were men and women gathered
around
the fire hearth, usas and splices in the cold corners. The regulars were at
the
bar, a couple of whom I recognized -- so old now, wizened like stored apples
in
a barrel. I looked around for a particular face, but she was not there. A
jukebox sputtered some core-cloud deak and the air was thick with smoke and
conversation. Or was, until I walked in. Nobody turned to face me. Most of
them
couldn't have seen me. But a signal passed and conversation fell to quiet
murmur. Somebody quickly killed the jukebox.
I blinked up an internals menu into my peripheral vision and adjusted to the
room's temperature. Then I went to the edge of the bar. The room got even
more
quiet.
The bartender, old Thredmartin himself, reluctantly came over to me.
"What can I do for you, sir?" he asked me.
I looked over him, to the selection of bottles, tubes and cans on display
behind
him. "I don't see it," I said.
"Eh?" He glanced back over his shoulder, then quickly returned to peering at
me.

"Bone's Barley," I said.
"We don't have any more of that," Thredmartin said, with a suspicious tone.
"Why not?"
"The man who made it died."
"How long ago?"
"Twenty years, more or less. I don't see what business of--"
"What about his son?"
Thredmartin backed up a step. Then another. "Henry," he whispered. "Henry
Bone."
"Just give me the best that you do have, Peter Thredmartin," I said. "In
fact,
I'd like to buy everybody a round on me."
"Henry Bone! Why, you looked to me like a bad 'un indeed when you walked in
here. I took you for one of them glims, I did," Thredmartin said. I did not
know
what he was talking about. Then he smiled an old devil's crooked smile. "Your
money's no good here, Henry Bone. I do happen to have a couple of bottles of
your old dad's whisky stowed away in back. Drinks are on the house."
And so I returned to my world, and for most of those I'd left behind it
seemed
as if I'd never really gone. My neighbors hadn't changed much in the twenty