"Alan Dean Foster - Interlopers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

INTERLOPERS
Alan Dean Foster




ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK
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Khuatupec was hungry.
He stirred within the stone. As solid and impermeable as it was beautifully carved, it stood upright alongside
its unformed and uninhabited basaltic kin. No light pene-trated the ancient temple where the stones reposed.
None had entered for hundreds of years. The absence of illu-mination did not matter to Khuatupec. Light
meant noth-ing to him. He and his kind utilized means and methods of perception that did not require its
presence.
Within him boiled The Hunger; a sere, seething whirlpool of dissatisfaction and emptiness. Considering how
long it had been since last he had fed, it was sur-prising the discomfort was not worse. Yet he contented
himself. For the first time in living memory, food was at hand. Something to eat. Something to suck at.
He divined its presence nearby, had been aware of it for some time now. Some days would see it draw
tanta-lizingly close, others would find it moving maddeningly away. There was nothing Khuatupec could do
but wait. In order for him to be able to feed, physical contact with the food was necessary. Because of his
nature, his situ,
3
that contact had to be initiated by the food itself. He envied others of his kind who could move about more
freely in search of sustenance. Most of them were much smaller than he, however, and needed less feeding.
His kin were multitudinous and diverse, but there was only one Khu-atupec. He. Him.
Having been patient for so many centuries, he would perforce have to be patient a while longer. But it was
frustrating to have so much fresh food so close at hand yet be unable to taste any of it.
Khuatupec waited within the carved stone, and brooded, and contemplated the ecstasy that was eating.
Soon, he persuaded himself. Soon enough the taste, the pleasure, the exhilaration of feeding would once
more be his. He wondered which of the food would be the first to make contact.
The condor descended in a lazy spiral, great hooked beak and immense black wings inclining in the direction
of something unseen and dead. It reminded Cody of the much smaller turkey vultures that haunted the skies
above the family ranch back home. Wiping perspiration from his forehead, he crouched down and resumed
gently blowing dust from the punctured skull in the center of square N-23.
The hole in the hoary cranium was large enough to admit his little finger. Working carefully within the
de-limitating grid of white cord that was suspended above the soil, he finished cleaning the skull before gently
depositing it in a waiting box padded with bubble paper. Unlike the Incas, for whom considerable evidence of
the primitive surgical procedure existed, there was no record of the Chachapoyans practicing trepanning. If
detailed study of the skull turned out to prove that they had employed the procedure, the results might serve
as the basis
for a formal paper. "Evidence of cranial medical practices among the Chachapoyans circa
A.D.1100-1400-Apachetarimac site, Amazonas Province, northern Peru." An effort suitable for Archaeological
Review, certainly, with a slightly more sensationalized version made available for Discover magazine or
Popular Science.
Pictures-he needed pictures. Straightening, he turned and reached for the rucksack that was lying on the
higher level nearby. On the far side of the excavation, Langois and Kovia were working on their knees on
opposite sides of a cracked monochrome pot. It displayed several of the same designs that decorated the
tawny limestone walls that formed the ancient citadel. Unlike the Incas, whose dark stonework tended to be
smooth and featureless, the Chachapoyans had incorporated an assortment of patterns into the foundations
of their round stone houses and rectangular temples. So far, diamonds, waves, and undulating figures that