"Steven Gould - Wildside" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

felt a sharp stab of grief. I looked away quickly and led the guys to the back corner stall. The pigeons
started cooing when I opened the door.

There were sixteen cages, handmade of chicken wire with wood framing. They were stacked
four by four, one bird per cage.

Marie and Rick looked at the book, then back at the cages. Then back at the book again. Clara
grabbed the book from them and flipped to the textual description. She read, "Grayish blue above,
reddish fawn below, resembling Old World turtledoves, but larger, thirty-two to forty-three
centimeters in length, with a longer pointed tail and a greater wingspread. Males have a pinkish body
and a blue-gray head."

Halfway through the description, Joey backed out of the stall and began looking around. He
climbed up the ladder to the loft, but all he found was hay. By the time he lifted the tarp on the table
saw and looked beneath it, the other three had emerged from the pigeon stall.

"What are you looking for?" asked Marie.

Joey was frowning, his lips pursed. "A time machine," he said.

All four of them looked at me. They seemed a little afraid.

"Wait a minute," said Rick. "These don't have to be passenger pigeons. Didn't the description
say they were similar to turtledoves in coloration?"

"These are much bigger," said Marie.

"Back breeding. Selecting for size. Breeding for larger and larger turtledoves. Is that what was
done, Charlie?"

"No."

Marie took a stab at it. "Then what about cloning? Didn't you say that the last passenger pigeon
died in 1914? They had refrigeration, then. Did they freeze some tissue and did somebody done
these, using doves or pigeons as host mothers?"

I shook my head.

Finally Joey just asked, "What are they, Charlie? What are those birds in the corner?"

"They're passenger pigeons."

He digested that. They all did. Finally he said, "So, where's the time machine?"

"There isn't one."

Clara almost shouted. "Then how did you get them?"

I folded my arms. "I'm not going to tell you. Not yet, anyway."