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

"Is that anything like the sense you're not making?" He knelt to have a look for himself, frowning slightly. His
flashlights reposed on the compact field desk back in his tent. At the same time, repressed excitement
surged through him. A second trepanned skull lying close to the first would be a good indication that they had
stumbled on an important ceremonial or medicinal center, perhaps the nearest thing that existed to a
Chachapoyan infirmary.
Sitting back, she continued to work with the two brushes, using the larger to sweep away clumps of earth
and the smaller for cleaning the depressions in the skull.
and intelligence, Kelli Alwydd was renowned in camp for her jokes, not all of them practical. At least, he
mused, she hadn't shouted "snake!" or something equally juvenile. As he paused, he wondered why he was
reacting at all, giving her what she wanted. Maybe, he decided, he was a sucker for clever women. Or maybe
he was just a sucker. Irrespective of the reason, he turned.
She was in the pit, having jumped down from mid-level so softly that he hadn't heard her land. Crouching, she
squinted in the receding light at a portion of grid
square V-9. Only slightly uncomfortable at finding the pose as pretty as it was professional, he ambled over
to join her, affecting an air of studied disinterest.
"Let me guess." He fought to keep a lid on his trade-mark sarcasm. "A solid gold peanut, like those in the
necklace from Sipan? Or is it just silver? Silver-and-turquoise ear ornaments, with articulated figures?"
She did not look up. "No. I think it's another skull." Reaching into one of her many shirt pockets, she brought
out a pair of brushes: one bold, the other fine-haired sable,
and began methodically flicking at the dirt in front of her feet.
He could have knelt to peer over her shoulder, steal-ing a small pleasure from the proximity. Instead, he
walked around to crouch down in front of her, careful to step
cleanly over the white cord that sliced the excavation into neat, easily labeled squares. Her brushwork was
rapid and precise, like the rest of her.
Reminiscent of scorched polystyrene, the smooth curve of a human cranium began to emerge from the soil of
ages in which it lay entombed. It was large, but not out
rageously so. Like the rest of their South American brethren, the Chachapoyans were a people of modest
stature.
With a sigh, Cody straightened. The sun was going
12
Immediately, he saw what had inspired her comment. There was indeed a cavity in the new skull, but it was
considerably larger than the one marring the specimen he was going to deliver to the field lab. No only was it
larger, but irregularly shaped, with ragged edges. Even the clumsiest shaman-surgeon could not possibly
have expected to cure any patient by opening such a grievous lesion. Furthermore, it was-weird.
Without waiting for her to finish exposing the base of the skull, he reached down and cupped his long fingers
around it, ignoring her protests as he pulled it from the earth. For the first time in centuries, it was fully
exposed to the air.
"Hey!" she objected, "I haven't finished cleaning that!" "Look at this," he said, holding the osseous discovery
out to her, his right index finger tracing paths across the bone as he spoke. "This isn't weird-it's impossible."
Around the rim of the opening in the roof of the skull, a jagged ridge of bone the diameter of a silver dollar rose
upward, like water rising around a pebble dropped in still water. It stood frozen in time, testament to some
unimaginable cerebral convulsion.
Kelli stared. "That's pretty extreme. It looks like the inside of his head blew up. Some kind of pressure
buildup in the cerebral fluid?" Her tone had turned serious.
"I don't know. I didn't have that much physiology." Straightening, he held the second skull up to the rapidly
fading light. "It sure doesn't look like the result of some intentional medical procedure, no matter how
primitive. What could cause the bone to rise up and solidify in this kind of position?" Carefully, he ran one
finger along the thin, sharp edge of the cranial crater.
She shook her head. "You got me. It's ugly. Samms is going to go crazy when she sees this."
Gently, he knelt once more to replace the skull in the