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

suggested serpents had been discovered.
Pots were rare. Apachetarimac was not Tucume or Pacatnamu, ancient cities that had hardly been touched
by archaeologists or tourists. Around their weathering adobe pyramids lay millions upon millions of
potsherds, relics of a thousand years of pottery-making by cultures with magical names: Chimu, Moche,
Lambayeque. The Chachapoyans had not left behind nearly as many clay vessels depicting their lives and
beliefs. Nor were the Calla Calla Mountains as conducive to the preservation of pottery as was the dry coastal
desert. The cracked pot was a fine discovery. Even so, Cody did not envy Langois and Kovia. He was content
with his punctured skull.
After taking several close-ups of the skull as it rested in its box, he removed it and set it on the chest-high
dirt ledge nearby. Checking the position of the sun, he tried to establish what he thought was the most
dramatic angle for another photo. He could shoot up against the sky, but
4
finally decided to use the distant mountains as background. Wearing their blankets of green and soaring to
heights of fourteen thousand feet and more, they would make a colorful backdrop for the dark brown bone.
Apachetarimac, he mused as he clicked off shots on the digital camera and then checked them in the
view-screen. Having conquered and absorbed the Chachapoyans as they had the majority of cultures in
western South America, the Incas had rechristened many of the cities inhabited by their new subjects. They
had left behind few clues as to the reasons for some of their choices. Some, like Machu Picchu and
Ollyantaytambo, were obvious. Apachetarimac, which translated from the Quechua as "sacred talking spot,"
was not. If his skull were capable of speech, it probably could have provided some answers. But the brain that
had once inhabited the weathered, dark brown ovoid had long since become food for worms.
Where it might have made another person queasy to think of it in such a setting, the prospect of the evening
meal set off a mild chain reaction in Cody's stomach. Though tall and lanky of build, he was no more immune
to the pangs of hunger than were his smaller colleagues. A steady diet of physical labor in the thin air at
nearly ten thousand feet worked up ravenous appetites. Frowning slightly, he placed the skull back in its
padded box and wondered if today dinner might be any different from what was expected. He doubted it.
Vizcaria, the camp cook, was nothing if not predictable. Cody would gladly have handed over ten bucks for a
decent chicken-fried steak.
He would have to be satisfied with the thought and the memory. Here in the heights of the Calla Calla
Mountains there were no roads and no restaurants. Choctamal, the nearest town, was three days' hard ride to
the north on the back of a plodding, crotch-splitting mule. The near
est real restaurant was in the provincial capital of Chachapoyas, another four hours' frightening ride down a
narrow, single-lane road boasting some of the longest, steepest drop-offs Cody had ever seen. Coming as he
did from the relatively flat hill country of south-central Texas, he had a harder time than some of his friends
with the thousand-foot precipices that seemed to lie beneath every bend in the lonely dirt track. Frankly, he
preferred the mules to the brake-pad-deprived minibuses and pickups.
"Looking good, Mr. Westcott!" a voice boomed from above. Langois and Kovia glanced up briefly before
returning to their own work. Dr. Harbos would query them in due time.
Martin Harbos, Ph.D., was director of the excavations at Apachetarimac. Five-ten or so, he was half a foot
shorter than the senior graduate student laboring beneath him. A candle or two shy of sixty, he still had more
hair than anyone else on the project, though every strand had long ago turned a startling silvery-white, the
blatant hue of a cheap Santa Claus wig. Rather than being a consequence of normal aging, the network of
deep lines that crevassed his face was inherited from his ancestors. His skin was burned brown from years of
field work, and beneath his shirt and shorts small, corded muscles exploded like caramel popcorn. He had
the bluest eyes Cody had ever seen, a ready sense of humor, and the ability to flay a student naked with a
casual, sometimes off-hand comment.
Today he chose to be complimentary. "Trepanning?" He was crouching at the edge of the excavation, peering
down at the skull in the box.
"I'd like to think so, Dr. Harbos." Though friendly, even jovial, the professor insisted on the honorific.
Fraternizing between officers and enlisted men was limited on Harbos's shift, Cody thought with a hidden