"Foster, Alan Dean - Cat-a-lyst" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

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CARTER had fought his bonds all morning without achieving anything more than a cramp in his shoulders.
Ashwood rolled over as her captors returned from their digging. She was stiff, dirty, and angry. "Find any gold?" she asked sarcastically as Fewick returned from his probing of the first of the three openings in the ancient wall. "No," he told her blandly. "Not much of anything. A few petroglyphs whose designs are new to me, some pottery shards, the remains of an old fire pit. Of course we have just begun. Great discoveries are not made in a day. Archaeology is a time-consuming science." He sat down on a
smooth rock while his porters began to prepare a meal. "Are we to eat?" Igor inquired. "Certainly. My desire is to immobilize you, not starve you. After my men and I have eaten, you will be released one at a time. I will sit here with my little gun and watch until all of you are finished. Isn't that nice of me?" "How long do y'all intend on keepin' us like this?" Ashwood asked him. "Are we expected to sleep with our arms and legs tied?"
Fewick pursed his lips. "I fear you are in for several uncomfortable nights. I do apologize." "So do L" The admonition did not come from Fewick's porters, nor from the pair of elderly Machiguenga who sat off to one side cooking something unappetizing over their own fire. "I wouldn' do that," the voice said more sharply when Fewick reached for the pistol holstered at his belt. "Who the devil are you?" Fewick looked toward the trees as his fingers halted a couple of inches above the butt of the gun.
A tall, leonine figure emerged from the brush. "My name is Francesca da Rimini."
Carter gaped at the unexpected arrival. Noting his reaction, Igor and
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Ashwood tried furiously to figure out what they were so obviously missing. Fewick's porters retreated from the confrontation while the two old Indian guides hardly bothered to look up from their cookfire.
Fewick's gaze narrowed. His hand remained in the vicinity of his gun. "Francesca da Rimini is a Russian opera." "Well, I not a Russian opera," the Amazon replied dryly. "My parents, they had poor imaginations but a good radio." "I am sorry, but that does not impress me." "Perhaps this will." She turned and whistled into the trees. In response to her signal three dark-skinned men emerged from the forest's edge. Two were twins, Carter saw. They wore identical clothing, carried identical backpacks, and more important, clutched identical AK-47s. If they were porters, Carter thought, they were extremely successful ones. Instead of T-shirts and frayed shorts they wore expensive twill pants and shirts, and their jungle boots looked brand-new.
The third individual wore tattered jeans holed at the knees and a badly
worn short-sleeved shirt. He looked to be in his teens.
Ashwood leaned toward Carter, whispering curiously. "That the same Amazon?" "I met her our first night in Cuzco, after you went to bed," the actor replied.
Ashwood's eyes rolled heavenward. "Lemme guess. You told her our
plans, right?" "I did not." Carter was feeling the prize fool. "She was very nice and just wanted to talk. I told her we were tourists." "Uh-huh. I mean, that's obvious, isn't it?" "Look, it's not my fault if she drew other conclusions. Maybe she's here to rescue us." "Right," said Ashwood tersely. "Just like my ol' flame Billy-Bob Postin went to robbin' banks because he never got that scholarship to Princeton." She made a rude noise. "I'll relieve you of this." Towering over Fewick, Da Rimini removed the pistol from his holster and stepped back. The two men behind her relaxed. "These are the Ferndndez brothers." She indicated her companions. "That Manco on the left. You can tell them apart because his brother, Blanco, is a little taller and uglier." The individual thus described smiled agreeably. "We are old friends."
The young Indian who'd accompanied Da Rimini strode apologetically past her and the captives, offering a raised hand and a few words by way of greeting. Minga and his dinner companion glanced up from their
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fire and responded unenthusiastically. The youngster took a seat across from his elders, whereupon the trio began chatting in low tones. "Lemme guess," said Ashwood sarcastically. "That boy's the only one, the only one in the world, who knows the location of the lost city of Paititi and could guide you to it." "Not exactly." Da Rimini had a wild look in her eyes. She no longer acted the oversized ingenue Carter had met in Cuzco. It took a very special, very unusual woman, he thought, to plunge into the selva with two heavily armed men hoping to find . . . what? "But he did know that his uncle had taken some white men in search of his grandfather, and how to track them."
Carter found that her darting gaze and quirky gestures were making him more nervous than the AK-47s. The supercilious Bruton Fewick might be obsessed, but at least he wasn't unbalanced. The more Carter saw and heard of her, the less assured he was of Francesca da Rimini's state of mind. How would she react to the discovery that the fabled lost city of Paititi consisted of a single crumbling wall, some overgrown paving stones, and three holes in the ground? "You I know, Jason Carter. Your outfitter, Igor von Mannheim de Soto, I also recognize, and the ugly old woman is clearly the friend you mentioned." Ashwood tensed but said nothing. Da Rimini's gaze danced over Fewick. "But who is this unpleasant fat man?" "His name's Bruton Fewick. He's kind of an archaeologist. He's the one who first figured out where this place was. Madorie and I, we sort of appropriated the information from him and got here first. He didn't like that, which is why we're tied up." "That is correct," said Fewick with misplaced self-importance. "I am
the official discoverer of Paititi. The rest of you are nothing more than intellectual interlopers."
Da Rimini responded by continuing to treat him with all the deference she would an ant. She glared at the disintegrating wall. "This is Paititi? This is all there is? Where is the city? Where is the lost gold of Atahualpa?" "This is a priceless archaeological site," Fewick informed her. "That is gold enough."
She glared murderously at him. "Don'joke with me, gordo. Not after what I gone through to get here." "I believe it may have been an Incan runners' station," he added stiffly.
She brushed the suggestion aside. "All the runner's stations are up in the mountains. The jungle would have slowed communication, not speed it up, and the selva tribes were hostile to the Incas." "There's no treasure here." Despite the delicate situation in which she
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found herself, Ashwood couldn't pass up an opportunity to sneer. "You blew it, sister. The only ones who'll make money on this little hike are the locals." With a jerk of her head she indicated the three guides seated around the cookfire. "We'll sec." Da Rimini was gazing fixedly at the wall. "There has to be treasure here. There must be treasure!" "Not necessarily," Fewick began. The archaeologist's ingenuousness made Carter wince. "If one considers the available literature it is clear that-" "Shut up! Shut up, cdllese usted!" Da Rimini slammed the barrel of the pistol across Fewick's face.
Carter's guts twisted but he said nothing. Fewick hadn't welcomed his predecessors with open arms, but neither had he hurt them.
The archaeologist stumbled backward but did not fall. A trickle of blood started from where his lip had been split. "Tie him with the others!"
Blanco Femdndez slipped his rifle over his shoulder and moved to comply. As he did so Da Rimini spoke sharply to Fewick's porters. With admirable alacrity, they grabbed what supplies they could carry and beat it into the jungle.
While Da Rimini angrily studied the unimpressive wall, Carter studied her. She had her hair secured with a single elastic band and her clothing was soaked through. Standing there clutching Fewick's pistol she looked like she was auditioning for a part in a cheapie Filipino adventure epic. Except that the gun she held wasn't packed with blanks. The hint of madness in her eye did much to mitigate her physical attractiveness.
Meanwhile her guide, his uncle, and his grandfather nattered on, oblivious to the inexplicable doings of the Europeans who had variously em-
ployed them. "What do you intend to do with us?" Igor inquired.
Her response was rather less considered than Fewick's had been. "Why, I'm going to kill you, of course. Did you think we carried these guns all this way to hunt hoatzins? But you will live for a while. We want that one," and she gestured at Fewick, "in case there is information to decipher, and the rest of you to help with any digging." "What if there are no secrets here?" Carter asked her. "What if there is no treasure?"
Her lower lip pushed out slightly. "If we find the treasure I am going to shoot you to protect it. If we don' I will shoot you out of disappointment. Or perhaps I will have you tied to palo santo trees. Have you been introduced to the charms of the palo santo?"
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Within the limitations imposed by his current posture Carter adopted his best leading-man pose. "I thought you liked me." "You very pretty, but I prefer my men determined, with a little more here." She tapped the side of her head. "Like the FernAndez brothers." Behind her, Manco Fernindez shifted his AK-47 and grinned.
Carter was dubious as he studied the two older, unattractive men. Then he noted anew the fancy jungle attire, the expensive weapons. "Money," he said. "You're with them because they have money." "It don' disinterest me," she replied amiably. "We understan' each other, Manco and Blanco and 1. Si, they have money. But not nearly enough for them, or me. So when I to]' them that I knew of some rich norteamericanos who were goin' to go looking for Paititi, they were anxious to come with me to see for themselves. This is not the first time we have done this, but it is the first time anybody has found something for US." "Hey, I recognize that one!" Manco FernAndez was looking at Carter. "He's an actor. I saw him at the Odeon in Miraflores, in Prison Planet. Santa Maria, what a stinker of a picture!"
Carter sighed. "Don't expect me to give you your money back." Ashwood regarded the critic. "What do you boys do for fun when you're not working as spear-chuckers for Fran the Giant?"
Self-importance colored Manco's reply. "We are bottlers." "Pardon?" said a confused Carter. The man straightened proudly. "Surely you have been in Peru long enough to have heard of Inca Cola." "Oh God." Ashwood rolled her eyes. "No, I haven't." Carter felt like he was acting a role in one of the screenplays his agent received on a regular basis from an eager slaughterhouse worker in Kansas City. "It's not cola like in Coca or Pepsi." Blanco Ferndndez tied the last of his knots. "Actually it uses a grapefruit base. My brother an' I," he declared smugly, "own the concession for most of central Peru an' the whole selva region as far north as Iquitos." "We have big plans," Manco announced. "My brother an' I are threequarter Indio, one-quarter Spanish. All our lives we resent the way the Spanish imposed their culture on our people and destroyed much of our
heritage. It has always been our dream to emphasize that culture in a
contemporary way. For that we need much money. Hard currency, not intis. The profit margin in soda bottling is thin." "We have accumulated some dollars but not nearly enough," Blanco added. "As you may know, there is a vast international black market for primitive art."
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"Oh no," said Fewick, blithely disregarding his precarious position. "Any artifacts found here belong to the Peruvian government." "We will put them at the service of the Peruvian people," Manco Femdndez replied sharply. "The true Peruvian people. Los Indios. Some we will keep for future display and education, but we will sell what we must to raise the money we need for our great project." He lifted his gaze to the ancient wall and its indecipherable petroglyphs. "Paititi has been a legend for so long, it is the ideal place to make our beginning." "Beginning of what?" Igor asked.
Manco looked down at the guide. "Our dream, which is to promulgate our native heritage. To restore its influence throughout the modem world. To make it come alive for people everywhere, not just narrow-
minded men who live in dry, dusty books." He glanced disdainfully at the sullen Fewick. "My brother and I," he continued proudly, "have made a study of the success of American popular culture, which has spread itself to every comer of the globe. We have tried to learn the secrets of its success so that we may apply them to our own culture. Now we believe that we have learned enough to proceed. We have formulated an unbeatable plan . . .all that remains is to find a means of financing it. "Not only will we spread our influence throughout the world, we will make money while doing so. This is our sacred trust." "Mind if I ask you a question?" Carter shifted his position on the hard ground. "Why do you call it Inca Cola if there's no cola in it?"
Manco Femdndez eyed him pityingly. "Do you know nothing of mar-
keting strategy? And you call yourself an American. All the great soft drinks are named 'something' cola. What does it matter what it contains? All that is important is if people buy it or not." "What's this 'great project'?" Ashwood asked in spite of herself. "A museum!" Fewick bestirred himself. "To showcase the great traditions of Inca culture, to display in a modem setting the grand achievements of your ancestors. Yes, I can understand, even sympathize with that." "A museum will be a part of the complex," Manco admitted. "A small part. It is evident you too know nothing of marketing. Do you not study your own society?" "Complex?" Carter said. "We are going to build a vast park here on the site of Paititi. It will include a museum, A Also a part of the rainforest, preserved for all to see. Sanitized and cleansed of insects, naturally." His gaze rose as he focused on his distant vision. "And rides, lots of rides. And shops, and
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theaters, and concession stands and fast-foot outletsl" His voice deepened with the sheer majesty of it. "Shooting galleries where people can fire back at the hated conquistadores! An amphitheater where the festival of Inti Raymi can be performed every day. A selva water park! A petting zoo!. "Today Paititi, tomorrow Rio and Buenos Aires. Then on to the United States and Europe and Japan. It will be called"-his voice shook with emotion- "Incaworldl "
In the dazed silence that followed, Igor de Soto said softly, "Some of us prefer the selva the way it is."