"James Rollins - Black Order" - читать интересную книгу автора (Romeyn Henry)

Father Varick retreated to the coal door. He wiped the blood and water from the baby. The child's hair
was soft and thin, but plainly snowy white. He could be no more than a month old.
With Varick's ministrations, the boy's cries grew stronger, his face pinched with the effort, but he
remained weak, limp limbed, and cold.
"You cry, little one."
Responding to his voice, the boy opened his swollen eyes. Blue eyes greeted Varick. Brilliant and pure.
Then again, most newborns had blue eyes. Still, Varick sensed that these eyes would keep their sky blue
richness.He drew the boy closer for warmth. A bit of color caught his eye. Was ist das? He turned the
boy's foot. Upon the heel, someone had drawn a symbol.
No, not drawn. He rubbed to be sure.
Tattooed in crimson ink.
He studied it. It looked like a crow's foot.
Y
But Father Varick had spent a good portion of his youth in Finland. He recognized the symbol
for what it truly was: one of the Norse runes. He hadno idea which rune or what it meant. He shook his
head. Who had done such foolishness?
He glanced at the mother with a frown.
No matter. The sins of the father were not the son's to bear.
He wiped away the last of the blood from the crown of the boy's head and snugged the boy into his
warm robe.
"Poor Junge...such a hard welcome to this world."


FIRST
ROOF OF THE WORLD
PRESENT DAY
MAY 16, 6:34 a.m.
HIMALAYAS
EVEREST BASE CAMP, 17,600 FEET
Death rode the winds.
Taski, the lead Sherpa, pronounced this verdict with all the solemnity and certainty of his profession. The
squat man barely reached five feet, even with his battered cowboy hat. But he carried himself as if he
were taller than anyone on the mountain. His eyes, buried within squinted lids, studied the flapping line of
prayer flags.
Dr. Lisa Cummings centered the man in the frame of her Nikon D-100 and snapped a picture. While
Taski served as the group's guide, he was also Lisa's psychometric test subject. A perfect candidate for
her research.
She had come to Nepal under a grant to study the physiologic effects of anoxygen-free ascent of Everest.
Until 1978, no one had summited Everest without the aid of supplemental oxygen. The air was too thin.
Even veteran mountaineers, aided by bottled oxygen, experienced extreme fatigue, impaired
coordination, double vision, hallucinations. It was considered impossible to reach the summit of an
eight-thousand-meter peak without a source of canned air.
Then in 1978, two Tyrolean mountaineers achieved the impossible and reached the summit, relying solely
on their own gasping lungs. In subsequent years, some sixty men and women followed in their footsteps,
heralding a new goal of the climbing elite.
She couldn't ask for a better stress test for low-pressure atmospheres.
Prior to coming here, Dr. Lisa Cummings had just completed a five-year grant on the effect of
/r/gr/r-pressure systems on human physiological processes. To accomplish this, she had studied deep-sea
divers while aboard a research ship, the Deep Fathom. Afterward, circumstances required her to move
on...both with her professional life and personal. So she had accepted an NSF grant to perform