"Eric Flint & Ryk E. Spoor - Boundary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

 It was clear to Helen, though, that none of them were looking at the precise features that
Sean Carter was. That was no surprise. If Helen had the reputation for being a fanatically
careful field worker, Sean Carter’s reputation for obsessive attention to detail made her look
like a dilettante.

Carter never missed a single clue in the study of a fossil. There had been one wag a number
of years before who had jested that Carter could probably visualize the entirety of the
Cretaceous in toto from a single bone. What he was seeing in this death scene bothered him
more and more. She could see his brow wrinkling so it looked like he was in actual pain.

Finally, he turned back to Helen. “Could I speak to you for a moment?”

“Sure, Sean. Come on, let’s take a little walk. I’ll show you where the first fossil came
from.”

Carter said nothing until they were well away from the others. Helen knew Sean Carter. He
was the kind of man who hated anomalies—they disordered his ordered view of life and his
profession—but he also hated avoiding the truth. The current situation was clearly causing him
a strain.

“I’m not sure what you have here, Helen. I can tell you have an idea of your own, and I’m
not sure I even want to think about what it might be. But I’m worried, very worried.”

“What has you worried, Sean?”

Carter snorted humorlessly. “Helen, you’ve been doing this excavation. Don’t tell me you
can’t see it.”

“Maybe I do, but I want to hear what you see, without me biasing your opinion.”

“Fair enough.” He gazed back at the site. “The three skeletons, near as I can tell, are in a
rough semicircle. They do not appear to have been fighting each other. In fact, it looks to me as
though at least one, possibly two, of them were trying to leave the area. And I don’t see any
clear indication of what killed them, unless it’s those odd holes. But then, what made those
holes? Those pebbles, are they cysts? I doubt it. Perhaps they were, as suggested, part of an
infection—perhaps one that had some kind of psychological effects, as a number of parasites
do, and could have caused erratic behavior… but…”

He studied the area again. “It’s hard to tell because of the effect of tendon contraction on
death, but it also looks as if they did not die immediately. More as though they spent a bit of
time thrashing in pain.”

“And your conclusions?”

He frowned even more. “I’m not sure I have any. But if there’s more to be found here, I
have a depressing feeling that it will be even stranger than we’ve already seen. Be careful. You
must be very careful.”

“Sean, come on. I’m being as meticulous as anyone can be.”