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

about it forever on the phone." She smiled, then added. "But the rocks aren't
terrestrial sediments. They're marine shales."
"Mine is shallow marine to mud flat," said Nikolai. "We found one
surface that looked like the Climactichnites layer, but without animal
imprints or tire tracks. I wish we had something like that. We need more
pieces of the puzzle." He pushed himself up, and it was time to move on.
****
Our enigma is in a rock face that looks south toward the lake. Anna
says glaciers exposed it when they pushed south tens of thousands of years
ago. The thick ice sheets thrust over the mountains, breaking off big chunks,
and leaving steep rocky slopes on the southern sides. I saw the same thing in
Maine when I was camping with my family.
Nikolai saw it as soon as we came through the trees. He exclaimed
something in Russian, then strode to the rock face. He pushed his glasses up
onto his forehead and studied the rock through the little hand lens that hung
on a cord tied around his neck. Then he shifted his gaze to the lighter rocks
embedded in the dark gray shale. Three roughly squared stones sat on top of
each other, the top one just above his eye level. He examined the lighter
rock, then peered intently through the hand lens at the edge touching the dark
rock. We watched as he ran his finger along the joint, then pulled a little
jackknife from his pocket and poked at it.
"Incredible. The are held as firmly in the matrix as glacial dropstones
are in marine sediment. If they were not square stones set on top of each
other, I would think they sank to the bottom from a melting iceberg."
"North America was on the Cambrian equator, Nikolai. I don't know of
any Cambrian ice age," said Anna. I had heard it before, as Anna and I had
debated how the rocks had come to be there. She had scoffed when I suggested
someone piled them together, but she could find no other explanation. Trying
to solve the mystery of the rocks was the first excuse for our calls; we found
others as the weeks passed.
 "You could make the rocks go away, if you want. Just ignore them.
Mikornin did that. I told him where to look, and I know he went there, but he
could not see them. He is a fool, Mikornin."
Anna nodded. She had told me about Alexei Mikornin, late one night when
she felt down and we were reaching out to each other on the phone. He was a
bright young geologist with a solid reputation, pulling contacts to get a job
in Anna's department and get out of Russia. Mikornin was no fool; he would not
waste his time on discoveries no one would believe. Anna worried someone like
him would get tenure instead of her.
She traced her fingers over the border of the embedded rock, as I had
done when I found it.
"Do you have anything else?" Nikolai asked.
"No fossils like yours," Anna said. "We found three other squared rocks
near here, but they are separate."
"Like the wall fell down before it was buried?"
"Yes."
"Have you tried digging any of them out?"
"Would you believe us if we had?"
Nikolai laughed. "Would anyone believe any of us?" He turned from the
rock face, looking back and forth between us. "If you did not see this, and I