"Barry N. Malzberg - Major League Triceratops" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

De-ca-dent, she said again. A great horned thing charging toward us in the night, yes.

You are strange, Maria, the paleontologist said. I do not understand you.

You are the bone, she said. You are the bone which talks to us. Take me home and show me the bone.

He turned away from her but his other hand was reaching, clutching for her waist. She felt the icy,
encircling touch. In old Montana, he said. They must have had a time.

They always had a time. Time was nothing for them. They cruised through the dirt like boats. Take me
out of here, she said. I have heard enough of Montana and the ranches and time. I donтАЩt want to look at
the dead things anymore. Now, she said, or not at all.

Am I toode-ca-dent for you, Maria? Is that what you are telling me?

She looked at the spaces up and down, the crucifixes of bone assembled now in small wedges up and
down the spines of the reconstructed tyrannosaur. I donтАЩt know, she said. Am I supposed to?

Back then, back here, he said. His grasp tightened and they were moving then toward the door, he
leading, she guiding, the two of them reaching but at the exit they stood for a while, first one then the
other pointing at the creatures looming before them. When they were gone at last, the fog, cleared slightly
by their respiration, closed on the emptiness and obscured what neither had seen: the small, round skull,
shiny and neat as an ornament, lying at the reconstructed rear left foot of the tyrannosaur, the eye hollows
glinting in the received light.

In the light my bird,the paleontologist cried later. But that had nothing to do with the gallery, he insisted.
Nothing to do with it at all. Her hands on his head were fire.

THE ROBLES TRANSCRIPTS
I am going to keep notes on this. Testimony is going to be kept. There will be some records of the
disaster, if disaster it will be. Going back to tormentTyrannosaurus, shootTriceratops, explore the flora
of the Cretaceous and sight the huge, dying beasts. We promised Dix a kill and a kill it is going to be, one
saved from paradox by this world. It will change nothing. (Perhaps it will change everything. But we
wouldnтАЩt know, would we?) Consider theTriceratops .

Considerthat beast. Weight up to five and a quarter tons, more than four thousand kilos, then. Thirty to
thirty-five feet in length full grown, flourished or at least lurked in this latest part of the Cretaceous (Latin
derivative,chalk ). One of the largest and meanest of the horned dinosaurs, not like scuttling
Struthiomimus or businesslike tyrannosaur but rather this is an animal with its own program. Put it down,
give it to Dix tomorrow, the number of the beast. With photographs. Three sharp, pointed horns on that
bland, boxy rhinoceros face, the horns measuring more than three feet. The mottled cores encircled by a
series of occipital bones. Am I doing this right? Ten species, more or less, slightly varied.

Those bony horn cores survive into our era in the form of rhinoceroses and some of the great horned
birds. The Great Montana Dude Ranch. Point the launcher, Dix, and let it fly,unseat the beast, make his
bones run like water. Perhaps overdramatizing but then again, melodrama is the last connection the
servant class can attempt toward a sense of their consequence. I think I just made that up now.

It is cold here, the small arc of light, the pungent blasts of heater do not really help, do not conceal the
cold. Dix, the winner of the contest, sleeps quietly, gathering himself against his great opportunity. I gather