"Severna Park - Harbingers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Park Severna)

Severna Park - Harbingers

In '06, Navardie and I found the aliens in a salty puddle at the top of a
hill in what was, at the time, Tanzania. The hill was the only one for
miles, spume from the meteor that had made Ngorongoro Crater Lake. Maybe
the meteor had something to do with why they were there to begin with.
We didn't notice them at first. It wasn't like they jumped out at us.
Navardie shaded her eyes against the noon sun and peered down at the blue
eye of the lake in the valley below. "Look, Annmarie," she said. "Lions!"
I was stretched out, belly-down, still breathless from the climb. Maybe
she could see lions way down there, but to me they were just little flecks
in the colorless dust. I rolled over and wiped the sweat and dirt off the
jack in my wrist. I hadn't been online in the six months since I'd been in
Tanzania, but rubbing the metal bud was a habit, like fingering a charm.
I squinted down the other side of the hill where our pilot was
contemplating the Piper-Nocturne's starboard engine which, for its own
reasons, had decided to quit for the day. From where we were, the plane
seemed to be floating in a sea of tall grass with only the cockpit and
tailfin visible. In a minute it might have sunk out of sight, into the
warm earth of the savanna.
Nav looked over my shoulder. "You could've rented a plane that worked,
Annmarie."
"You're the one who wanted to go to Olduvai."
"I thought you wanted to come."
"I did," I said, "I do."
She rubbed her forehead and smeared white dust over her dark skin. "We'll
never get back to Dar by sundown," she said. "What if someone finds out
we're off base?"
"What're they going to do?" I said. "Kick us out of the country?"
They were going to anyway. Back in the capital, Dar es Salaam, the
Tanzanian government was positioning itself to shut down the US
YouthCorps, and that was us. Getting rid of us foreigners might appease
the New African Congress guerrillas for a while, but everyone knew that US
troops were waiting just north, in Kenya. If the NAC decided to flex its
muscle in Tanzania like it had in Rwanda, and points south . . . well.
Tourist trips to Olduvai would be out of the question for a long time.
Nav sighed and smoothed her short hair. "I'm thirsty," said Nav. "Did you
bring a canteen?"
I hadn't. I grinned at her. "Should I run and get you one?" I might have.
Nav was the kind of straight girl I get these terrible crushes on. She
knew. I'm sure she knew. I angled a thumb at the lake below. "You could go
down there."
"And get eaten by the lions?" She peered over the rocky edge of the
hilltop. "There's water right here."
I looked. A pool of water cached in a hollow, shallow and hot blue, like
the sky. It was just out of reach from where we were. "Probably
contaminated," I said.
"Its fine," said Navardie. "It's just rain water."
She edged down over loose stones on her hands and knees. I sat up,
worrying that there was a chance of her falling off the hill and plunging