"Jeff Hecht - The Rumor of the Ruined City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hecht Jeff)

time to make the Russian trip before her fall classes started. And she wanted
time to think, to decide if she could face the inevitable battles with other
scientists who would not believe the rocks.
I went inside the tent and packed our gear. After a long debate, they
compromised on a three-month wait.
"What do you think it is?" Nikolai asked me as we loaded our gear into
the car.
"I have no more idea than Pliny Moody did when he found those old
footprints," I answered, wondering what the boy would have thought of
dinosaurs.
Nikolai laughed and unzipped a side pocket of his pack. "This is for
you," he said, handing me a cardboard-backed envelope with Russian writing on
the outside. "It is a picture of another thing from my ruined city. Do not
show it to Anna; she will not believe until she sees it."
****
We talked of the future and the past on the way back to Boston. Nikolai
was planning for retirement, unsure how he would fare in changing Russia. Anna
had a grant application pending, as well as her worries about tenure. I had a
big new microscope project coming up. And we all wondered what could have
happened half a billion years ago.
Nikolai's flight was first, so we dropped him off at the international
terminal. He hugged us both and kissed Anna on the cheek before gathering his
luggage to walk through the glass doors.
I drove back around the airport loop to drop off Anna. "I wonder what
he saw?" she mused as we got out of the car in front of her terminal.
"The sort of thing you see in the rocks that I don't understand."
"There are many things I don't understand myself," she said, looking
deep into my eyes. She reached out her arms and we hugged tightly. "You did
the right thing."
"I try," I said. "You're doing the right thing, too."
 "It isn't easy. Sometimes I'd just like to run away from it all. But we
can't really do that."
I agreed, and we let each other go. We kissed each other chastely on
the cheeks. She gathered her things, and waved a broad farewell before she
went inside.
Suzanne was waiting for me at home. "I knew you'd be getting home now,"
she greeted me, as glad to see me as I was to see her. There was nothing
chaste about our kisses. As we brought my gear inside, I remembered Nikolai's
envelope. I told Suzanne that the mad Russian had given me something
mysterious, and handed it to her unopened. She pulled out a black and white
photo, and examined it carefully. "Footprints," she said, returning it to me.
"Somebody rode a all-terrain vehicle in the mud, got off, and walked around
before riding away."
I looked at the photo. A pair of tread marks crossed the picture,
spaced evenly like the wheels on a Jeep or ATV. No pair of Climactichnites
could have marched along so uniformly. At the top, the path curved and the
tracks doubled, showing all four wheels. Each tread was deeper in two spots,
as if the vehicle had stopped. There, on opposite sides of the tracks, were
prints from small, odd-shaped waffle-soled hiking boots, the sort that the
animal we found might have worn. Someone had gotten out and walked across the