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

220 years ago. That was as far back as I had expected to look when Anna and I
set down our buckets of red paint to walk along the old stone wall.
He pulled a small box from his bag and opened it. "I brought some index
fossils from my deposits." I had to look carefully to see the trilobite
outlined in one rock. Anna examined each sample with the metal-cased hand lens
that she wore between her breasts on a leather thong.
"I can't place any of these, Nikolai, but I haven't found anything good
for dating here." Anna paused. "Maybe tomorrow."
I must have looked puzzled to the Russian. "Do you understand what we
do, Vern? If our index fossils match, it means your ruined city was built at
the same time as mine."
"The same geological time, Nikolai," Anna added.
"Ah, yes. Within a million years or two." He grinned, showing his gold
tooth in the lantern light. I walked back to check the stew, wondering if Homo
Erectus had tamed fire a million years ago.
****
On the third day, we moved to the other rock face which showed squared
stones embedded in the shale. We had little luck until Anna spotted a big rock
that had fallen from the rock face, with its top layer separating like veneer
from ruined plywood. A thin sheet four feet long and almost three feet wide
came loose easily when I jammed a branch underneath and pried. Nikolai helped
Anna slide the top piece to the ground, exposing the fresh surface.
Shiny black ridges caught my eye at once. Anna gasped in surprise.
Nikolai muttered something in Russian.
"What is it?" I asked.
Neither said a word as they stared at the fossil. To me, it was just
part of another unknown animal, perhaps as big as a bear or crocodile when it
lived, but with many legs and a body divided into many segments like a
lobster's tail. I could not read much from the rock, but I could read the
mixture of excitement and distress on their faces. "It isn't supposed to be
here, is it?"
Anna looked at Nikolai, eyes wide. "Have you ever seen anything like
this?"
"Not this size." His voice was hollow. "Could it be an anomalocarid or
proto-eurypterid?" He shook his head, answering his own question.
I could see claws and legs where Anna and Nikolai pointed to them. One
had four toes spread out at the end; another showed three toes. Each leg was a
couple of inches wide, and I could see half a dozen legs clearly on one side
where the legs were intact. The legs might have kept on going, but the rock
had broken in the middle of the fossil.
"Look at the eyes," Nikolai half-whispered. Four of them, big and
multi-faceted, looked toward each point of the compass from the top of a head
the size of a dinner plate.
"It's incredible. Where could it fit, Nikolai?"
They muttered uncertain words back and forth, looking at the thing from
different angles. It seemed obvious to me. "It came from the ruined city. It
probably built it."
Anna's face turned to me, framed by unkempt brown hair. "Yes, but what
is it? What did it evolve from? Where does it fit on the evolutionary tree of
life? This thing lived no more than 30 million years after the start of the