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

shaft leading up to the citadel. Somewhere above us there must be an unexcavated chamber that holds the
surface opening to this cavern."
She eyed the collapsed stone uneasily. "I don't think I want to spend a lot of time standing underneath that.
What if our work here loosens the fill and it all comes crashing down?"
"I don't think that will happen. It's apparently been stable for centuries. Besides, I don't think it's a natural
collapse. I think the shaft was plugged by the Incas, just like the entrance to the tunnel."
She frowned. "Why would they do that?"
He was kneeling beside his collection of tools for digging and cleaning. "When we find that out, we'll know
why they sealed the entrance to this cave."
Bending, she knelt to work alongside him with dental pick and whiskbroom. "Couldn't have been much of a
seal if you were able to take it apart all by yourself."
He gently brushed debris from a relief showing men and women working in a field. "Maybe something else
kept people away. A taboo, priestly warnings, royal edict from Cuzco-sooner or later, we'll find out." His
confi-dence was infectious.
Two weeks passed before they stumbled across the second tunnel. Narrower than the first, it proved a difficult
passage even for Alwydd. She was amazed at how lithely her much taller companion wriggled wormlike
through the cramped corridor.
They emerged into a second, smaller chamber. Unlike
the one that now lay behind them, the new discovery bore all the hallmarks of artificiality. No broken
speleotherms presented themselves for examination. This was a room that had been hollowed out by hand,
the result of back-breaking physical effort on the part of hundreds of hands working over many dozens of
years. No shaft, blocked or otherwise, marred the polychromed ceiling.
Disappointment followed discovery. No one had ever found a Chachapoyan royal tomb, and the room seemed
a perfect candidate. Their lights did not flash off gold or silver, turquoise or lapis lazuli. They did, however,
reveal a large round stone situated in the center of the room. Unlike the surrounding limestone, it was dark
granite. Somehow, it had been carried or dragged from elsewhere to this improbable site.
Very dark granite, Cody thought. Closer inspection of the stone showed why.
"Bloodstains." Raising his light, he played it around the intricately decorated walls. If anything, the carving
here was even more refined than that which filled the larger chamber behind them. "This was a place of
sacrifice."
"Sure was." The unflappable Alwydd was already checking her camera preparatory to methodically recording
the succession of exquisite if bloodthirsty reliefs that lined the circular walls. "Let's get to work. We've only
got an hour before we have to be back in camp."
As they began, they sensed nothing. The atmosphere did not grow heavy, the darkness did not press any
closer, trying to strangle their lights. But around them, beneath them, above them, an ancient
unwholesomeness stirred. It existed in a silent frenzy of expectation. As they toiled, Westcott and Alwydd
occasionally made contact with a relief or ran speculating fingers over stones and stains. But never the right
stone, or the right stain. Millimeters
away from havoc and ruin and ultimate despair, they worked on unaware, their living, breathing, human
presence driving an unseen host to fevered distraction. To the two who worked largely in silence, side by
side, nothing was amiss in the archaic chamber. Nothing disturbed their work or interfered with their efforts.
The only things that pressed close around them were their thoughts, the cool, damp mountain air, and the
mold of ages.
So when old Elvar Ariola, one of the mule wranglers and camp assistants, went mad, they did not make the
connection.
The food was very near. Nearer than it had been in a long, long time. Utchatuk trembled with anticipation,
while all the others of her kind looked on with a mixture of envy and hope. If they could not feed, they could at
least try to imagine the satisfaction and satiation of another. There had been so many missed opportunities,
so many close chances.
Bending, Ariola reached for the dead, broken limb preparatory to tossing it aside, making a clearer path for