"Baxter, Stephen - Manifold 03 - Origin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baxter Stephen)

lifting the branches and ramming them into the ground.

It wasn't like watching adults work on a project, however unskilled. It was more
like watching a bunch of eight-year-olds trying to build a bonfire for the very
first time, figuring it out as they went along, with only the dimmest conception
of the final goal.

But these hominids, these people, weren't eight-year-olds. They were all adults,
all naked, hairless, black. And they had the most beautiful bodies Emma had ever
seen, frankly, this side of a movie screen anyhow. They were tall and lean - as
tall as basketball players, probably - but much stronger-looking, with an all
round grace that reminded her of decathletes, or maybe Aussie Rules footballers
(a baffling, sexy sport she'd tried to follow as a student, long ago).

With broad prominent noses and somewhat rounded chins, they had human-looking
faces - human below the eye line, anyhow. Above the eyes was a powerful ridge of
bone that gave each of them, even the smallest child, a glowering, hostile look.
And above that came a flat forehead and a skull that looked oddly shrunken, as
if the top of their heads had somehow been shaved clean off. Their hair was
curly, but it was slicked down by the rain, showing the shape of their
disturbingly small skulls too clearly.

The bodies of humans, the heads of apes. They spoke in hoots and fragmentary
English words. And not one of them looked as if he or she had ever worn a stitch
of clothing.

She had never heard of creatures like this. What were these people? Some kind of
chimp, or gorilla? - but with bodies like that? And what chimps used English?

What part of Africa had she landed in, exactly?

The rain came down harder still, reminding her she had a job to do.

She made her way out into the open, working across increasingly boggy ground,
until she reached her parachute. She had been worried that the hominids might
have taken it away, but it lay where it had fallen when she had come tumbling
from out of the sky.

She took an armful of cloth and pulled it away from the ground. It came loose of
the mud only with difficulty, and it was soaked through. She'd had vague plans
of hauling the whole thing into the forest, but that was obviously impractical.
She hunted through her pockets until she found a Swiss Army knife, kindly
provided by the South African air force. She quickly discovered she had at her
disposal a variety of screwdrivers, a can and bottle opener, a wood saw,
scissors, a magnifying glass, even a nail file. At last she found a fat, sturdy
blade. She decided she would cut loose a piece of cloth perhaps twenty feet
square, which would suffice for a temporary shelter. Later, when the rain let
up, she would come back and scavenge the rest of the silk.

She began to hack her way through the 'chute material. But it was slow work.