"Chad Oliver - The Winds of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oliver Chad)

he still doesn't look like the All-American Boy. Somebody's bound to notice him. Somebody's
bound to recognize those clothes. Jo will have called the police by now, they'll be watching …
The man opened the port and went out into the cave. The port clicked shut behind him.
Wes still could not move. He lay on his back, covered by the man's clothing, and out of the corner of
his eye he could just see the niches in the far wall, where the four silent bodies slept.
He hoped they didn't wake up.
Even through the fog of the drug doubts assailed him. Would the man actually get to Lake City? It
would be a pretty fair walk if he didn't spot the car. Could he drive? If he had never seen a chocolate
bar, had he ever seen an automobile? Suppose he made it to Lake City. The police would be looking for
Wes, not for a man they had never seen. Would they spot his clothes? After all, they were just the
standard fisherman's rig. The trousers were torn a little, but there was nothing very unusual about that.
And the hat was missing, unless the man picked it up on the way. The car was the best bet, the car with
the California plates. If he took it—
How odd would a man have to look before a merchant would call the police? If Wes were running a
drugstore and that man came in, what would he think? Probably just write him off as a weirdie and let it
go at that. Remember, during the war, the two guys in Nazi uniforms who strolled through Times Square,
or wherever it was …
Time seemed to be passing rapidly. Wes was not quite asleep, but not completely awake either. It
was as though he had a slight fever, dozing in bed, waiting for a cold to go away.
He knew what the man was after in town, or thought he did. He was obviously starving. If Wes had
been in that position, he would have tried to buy some food, and it seemed reasonable to suppose that
the man would think along the same lines. But there were only four dollars in that billfold. If the man was
figuring on stocking up on provisions, he was in for a rude surprise.
Wes felt suddenly cold. It was not so very far from here, back in the old days, where a miner had
gotten snowed in for the winter with three companions, without enough food to go around. When spring
came, the miner came out of the cabin alone, sleek and well fed. The story was that he had died in the
penitentiary, a confirmed vegetarian …
If the man couldn't get enough supplies in town, then what?
Wes tried to turn his thoughts to more pleasant subjects.
That turned out to be not so easy, however. No matter where he started, his thoughts always came
back to the man, to say nothing of his four snoozing companions. Who were they? Where could they
have come from?
And what did they want?
In spite of himself Wes had to admire the man. Looked at through his own eyes, he was doing a
brave and remarkable thing—even a fantastic thing. He seemed to be utterly alien, completely unfamiliar
with even such a common article as a chocolate bar. He either did not know English or refused to speak
it. Presumably Wes looked just as strange to him as he did to Wes. And yet he was willing to put on
another man's clothes and try to find his way to a town where he could buy food he had never seen
before with money he couldn't possibly understand.
 The man was having his troubles too.
Somehow that made Wes feel a little better.
He dozed off, fell into an uneasy sleep.

He was awakened by the click of the port when it opened. The man hurried through and closed the
port behind him. He looked utterly exhausted, and he was trembling violently. Wes tried to get up, and
still couldn't move.
The man looked at Wes—how? Angrily? Hopelessly? He put down a cardboard box he was
carrying and unpacked it. It was pitiful, even to Wes. Four loaves of bread. Two cans of asparagus. And
about fifty assorted candy bars.
Looking very pale again, the man stretched out on the rocks next to Wes, sighed a little, and went to