"Continued on the Next Rock by R.A. Lafferty" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

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CONTINUED ON NEXT ROCK

R. A. Lafferty

Up in the Big Lime country there is an upthrust, a
chimney rock that is half fallen against a newer hill. It is
formed of what is sometimes called Dawson Sandstone
and is interlaced with tough shell. It was formed during
the glacial and recent ages in the bottomlands of Crow
Creek and Green River when these streams (at least five
times) were mighty rivers.
"The chimney rock is only a little older than mankind,
only a little younger than grass. Its formation had been
upthrust and then eroded away again, all but such harder
parts as itself and other chimneys and blocks.
A party of five persons came to this place where .the
chimney rock had fallen against a newer hill. The people
of the party did not care about the deep limestone below:
they were not geologists. They did care about the newer
hill (it was man-made) and they did care a little about
the rock chimney; they were archeologists.
Here was time heaped up, bulging out in casing and
accumulation, and not in line sequence. And here also
was striated and banded time, grown tail, and then shat-
tered and broken.
The five party members came to the site early in the
afternoon, bringing the working trailer down a dry creek
bed. They unloaded many things and made a camp there.
It wasn't really necessary to make a camp on the ground.
There was a good motel two miles away on the highway;
there was a road along the ridge above. They could have
lived in comfort and made the trip to the site in five
minutes every morning. Terrence Burdock, however, be-
lieved that one could not get the feel of a digging unless
he lived on the ground with it day and night.
The five persons were Terrence Burdock, his wife
Ethyl, Robert Derby, and Howard Steinleser: four beauti-
ful and balanced people. And Magdalen Mobley who
was neither beautiful nor .balanced. But she was electric;
she was special. They rouched around in the formations a
little after they had made camp and while there was still
light. All of them had seen the formations before and had
guessed that there was promise in them.
"That peculiar fluting in the broken chimney is almost
like a core sample," Terrence said, "and it differs from
the rest of it. It's like a lightning bolt through the whole
length. 'It's already exposed for us. I believe we will re-