"Foster, Alan Dean - He" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

"A strange thing for you to say, Sea-Doctor," smiled Ha'apu. "But I do not blame you. Come back with me. Bring a good boat and your diving tools. I will show you what remains of our young men's paopao. And then I will take you to the spot where I saw Him, if you dare. He may have returned to the deeps. Surely this is a rare thing, or He would have been seen before. There must be a purpose for it."
B.S., M.S., Ph.D., he thought hard for a moment. The legend stuff was all bushwah, of course. But the tooth ... he tried to visualize its owner, and a little shiver went down his spine. This business about soul-changing . . . ridiculous! . . . he, frightened of another fish?
"This tooth could be very, very old, you know. They've been found before, like new. Although," he swallowed and cursed himself for it, "not quite of this size. According to the best estimates these creatures became extinct only very recently."
"Creatures? There is only one of him," said Ha'apu firmly.
"You could fake the ruined outrigger," persisted Poplar.
"To what end?"
"I don't know!" He was irritated at his irrational terror. Goddammit, man, it probably doesn't exist! And if it, by some incredible chance, did, it was only another fish.
"Maybe you want to attract those tourists you profess to dislike. Or want to try and wangle some free diving equipment. Or simply want to draw some attention to yourself. Who knows? But I can't take that chance." He took another look at the tooth. "You
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know I can't, damn you. Where are you staying while you're on Tutuila?"
"With friends."
"Okay, we have a couple of cruisers here at the station. They're not in use just now. Down at the very end of Pier Three. The one we'll use is called the Vatia. You can't mistake it. The other, the Aku-Aku, is longer and has a flying bridge. Meet me at, oh, ten tomorrow morning, on the pier. If you get there ahead of me, tie your boat to the stern." He stopped turning the tooth over and over, feigned unconcern. Inside, he was quivering with tension.
"May I keep this?" He knew what he was asking. Did the chief?
"There is another still set in the paopao. Yes, you may have this one. For your children, to remind them of when you were young."
"I have no children. I'm not married, Ha'apu."
"That is sad. The other tooth must remain with us. It will not. . ." he said, in reply to the imposed question, '*... ever be for sale."
Poplar was seeing his name blazoned across the cover and title page of every scientific journal in the world. Below the name, a picture of himself holding the largest tooth of Carcharodon megalodon ever found. He might even manage to include Ha'apu in the picture.
He leaned over the desk, began shuffling papers.
"Good-bye till tomorrow, then, Matai Ha'apu."
"Tofa, Sea-Doctor Poplar." The chief gathered up his wrappings and left quietly.
He began going over the supplies they'd need in addition to what was standard stock on board the Vatai. Plan on being gone at least a week, maybe two. Get him out of the office, at least.
Elaine walked in, strolled over to the desk and leaned across it. That finished any attempt at paperwork. When she noticed the tooth in front of him, she almost swallowed her gum.
'My God, what's that?'
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"You're a master's candidate in marine bio. You tell me." He handed it to her.
She examined it closely, and those pixie eyes got wider and wider.
"Some gag. It looks like a Great White's tooth. But that's absurd."
"So was the coelacanth when it turned up in 1938," he replied evenly.
"But it can't be Carcharodon!" she protested. "It's three times too big!"
"For Carcfarodon carcharias, yes. Not for Carcharodon megalodon." He turned and dug into,the loosely stacked books that inhabited the space between desk chair and wall. In a teacher-student situation, he was perfectly comfortable with her.
"You mean the Great White's ancestor? Well, maybe." She took another look at the unreal weapon in her hand. "I found one in Georgia about half this size. And there was a six-incher turned up just a few years ago. Extrapolating from what we know about the modern Great White, carcharias, that would mean this tooth came out of a shark ninety fee -- "
"Ah-ah," he warned.
"Oh, all right. About, urn, thirty meters long." She didn't smile. "Kind of hard to imagine."
"So are sharks attacking boats. But there are dozens of verified incidents of sharks, often Great Whites, hitting small craft. Happens off stateside waters as well as in the tropics. The White Death. The basis for a real Moby Dick, only ten times worse. Not to mention a few thousand years of sea-serpent stories."
"You think one of these might have survived into recent times?"
Poplar was thumbing through a thick tome. "That's what that chief thinks, only to him it's a god and not a shark. The Great White prefers ocean-going- mammals to fish. Probably this oversized ancestor of his fed on the earlier, slower-moving whales. First the whales grew more streamlined, and then man began picking off the slower ones. The sea couldn't have supported
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too many of these monsters anyway. A megalodon would have a killer whale for breakfast."
"A man-eater as big as a blue whale." She shook her lovely head. "A diver's nightmare."
"The Matai who brought this one in says he knows where there's another, and maybe more."
"Far out. You think I might get my thesis out of this?"
"Well," he smiled, "the chief did say that according to legend anyone who sees Him is forever changed. All you've got to do is spot Him."
"Very funny."
"We leave first thing tomorrow morning, on the Vatai. Tenish. Now go and pack." But she was already out the door.
She was not so happy for the reasons Poplar thought
Tourists waved from the hotel balcony. It had been built at the point where the open sea met Pago Pago's magnificent harbor. Elaine slid her lava-lava down a little lower on one shoulder and waved back coquet-tishly. Poplar looked up from the wheel disapprovingly.
"Just because naked native maidens went out of fashion forty years ago is no reason for you to feel any obligation to revive the tradition for the benefit of overweight used-car salesmen from Des Moines."