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

anthropologist, Kelli examined the skull and its inscrutable rupture. "It's the exposure of the brain."
"People can live with that, too." With the delicacy of a surgeon, Samms was using a fine brush to coat the
interior of the skull with a stabilizing preservative. "Maybe not for long, but they can live."
Kelli's gaze drifted to the ingress to the big tent, the outside masked by the protective insect mesh that was
all that presently restricted entry. "Whatever the cause of the initial trauma, it must have been hellishly
painful. The mother of all migraines."
Samms concentrated on her work. "We don't know that. There are people with cranial deficiencies who,
though they have to wear protective headgear all the time, live normal and productive lives." Sitting back, she
rubbed at her eyes, swatted away a mosquito that had slalomed the mesh screen, and smiled speculatively
up at her visitor. In front of her, the laptop glowed insistently.
"Speaking of productive lives, I haven't seen much of your tall, silent-type, warrior chieftain lately."
They shared a mutual chuckle. His ethnic origins notwithstanding, the owlish, workaholic Westcott was about
as far from either woman's image of a warrior chieftain as could be imagined. Or as Samms had put it on a
previous occasion, definitely not romance-novel cover material.
"He's not my warrior chieftain, or anything else." Alwydd's prompt reply was convincing. "But he is the senior
student on site, so everybody has to spend time with him." She fiddled with a can of fixative. "'That is, they
do if they want answers to questions. Harbos is always busy."
"So's Westcott, from what I'm told." The anthropolo
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gist indicated the overflowing folding table that had to serve as lab bench, research facility, and office. "I
wouldn't know, myself." She grinned, a misplaced elf with short black hair, dirt-streaked face, and
impressively elevated IQ. "I don't get out much. People bring me bits of dead folk and from that I'm expected
to explicate entire civi-lizations."
"Easier than trying to explicate Coschocton Westcott. " Alwydd started for the mesh that separated the
sterile, white interior of the tent from the green and brown world of bites and stings that lay in wait outside.
"And he isn't even dead."
"Good luck trying to understand him." Samms snapped her high-powered, self-illuminating magnifying
glasses back down over her eyes. "Me, I'll stick with dead people. Dead men might be full of contradictions,
but at least they're soft-spoken. And more predictable in their habits."
"Cody's predictable." Alwydd drew the mesh aside and stepped out into the stark mountain sunshine. "He
just doesn't know how to relax."
Hunched over instruments and skull, Samms replied without looking up. "Sure you want him to relax?"
Standing outside the tent, her expression scrimmed by the mesh, Alwydd stuck her tongue out at her
seated, pre-occupied colleague. "Funny lady. Stick to your bones." Despite her studied indifference, Alwydd
found herself spending more time in Westcott's company than could simply be justified by the need to know.
Perhaps she was intrigued by his failure to fall all over her, as every other student on the site had already
done. She loved a challenge, be it scientific or social. Or maybe it was because, despite his denials to the
contrary, he was different. Or possibly it was nothing more than the ease with which they worked together.
He was one bright guy, with a genuine insight and intelligence that did not arise solely from the study and
memorization of standard texts. Or maybe she was just bored.
Not with her work. That was more than sufficiently fascinating in its own right. But aside from her studies,
working on her paper, and keeping records, there wasn't much to do at Apachetarimac. Not with the nearest
town days away by mule, and the only city of any consequence another half-day's jarring journey via minibus
or jeep.
So she shadowed him when she could spare the time, admiring his skill with the tools of archaeology, his
persistence and patience with something as insignificant as an unsculpted potsherd. And then one morning,
when she awoke well before dawn, she decided to go and see if he wanted to join her in watching the sun
come up over the east end of the citadel. That was when she found his tent empty, lights out, sleeping bag
neatly zipped and stretched out on its cot. His predawn absence bemused her. Even workaholics at the site,
of which Coschocton Westcott was not the only one, needed their sleep after a hard day of laboring in the