"Sean McMullen - An Empty Wheelhouse" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

existed?"
"Why bother? A commercial metal detector works a hundred times better these days... on the other
hand, I suppose that if you bred up and trained a herd of a thousand or so, then they cover a lot more
ground than a human, and for no more pay than a barrel of worms. It just might be possible, but then of
course their scientific value would be just astronomical as well. If you do find anything I'd, ah, drop me a
line."
"I'll do that. I really must go now. Bye Neil."
He glanced back to the field station. "Bye Helen." No kiss.
It was only on the flight back to Oahu that she realised the glorious truth: the affair was over! No
scene, no tears, no long, excruciating discussions. They had broken up by default. She celebrated by
getting slightly drunk at a bar near the international airport, then slept soundly for much of the long flight
south.
Melbourne turned out to be the hardest phase of the project. She had to search through the local
histories for references to Hooligan, especially the ramming of his riverboat. Weeks passed, with no
result. There were no references to Hooligan, except for his death notice-- he had drowned in the
Murray River at Albury. After the local histories Helen searched the card indexes of the special
collections, the collection of early photographs, and even the sound recording archives. She reported
daily over her Internet link, telling her nameless employer of the lack of progress.
After the first week she had moved out of the hotel and into a student house near Melbourne
University. She was growing to like Melbourne, which was similar to Oakland and San Francisco, yet on
a bigger scale. By now she had amassed a fair amount of background knowledge on nineteenth-century
Australia's riverboat systems, especially on the role of Americans in running them. Might there be a Ph.D
topic here, after the project was over? Of course there would be an interview, yet this was on a subject
that she understood well, and she would not be lost for sensible words. She took a tramcar to the
University of Melbourne.
The interview with Dr. Merrin of the History Department went well. There was a shortage of students
because of recent cuts in government funding, and being a candidate with a good academic record and
comfortable savings made Helen a good prospect. The talk moved to her recent work.
"Riverboats?" exclaimed the lecturer. "There's a coincidence. Just last month the History Department's
library was given the manuscript of an old riverboat pioneer. He was in his eighties when he died. It's a
sort of rambling autobiography, transcribed by one of his sisters from his own words. The writing is a bit
overblown-- it was done in the 1940's, after all-- but it's full of good material. I was thinking of editing it
for publication. Would you like to have a look through it?"
She certainly did. The straggly writing was on musty paper, with the blue ruling running slightly. On the
fifteenth page she found the holy grail that had drawn her around the world.
Then there was the time dad worked for Bren Hooligan, a really mean cove. He came out of the
eastern highlands driving a bullock cart with a hardwood cage on the back. There were ten
possums in it. One of his men told dad that they were called wateroos.
Now Hooligan hired a sternwheeler steam barge and had the cage put on board while he and
his two men went off to buy supplies and fuel. Dad was always hanging about on the docks
looking for odd jobs, so they paid him a shilling to feed the possums and clean the cage.
Dad liked animals, and these were so tame that he started to let them out of the cage on a
leash, one at a time. He noticed that their back feet were webbed for swimming, and their
forepaws were just like hands. Their fingertips were big, soft pads, and gave dad a tingling feeling
when they touched him.
Around noon he was sitting on the edge of the barge, flipping his shilling in the air and feeling
pretty pleased about having such easy work. Well, he missed a catch, and the coin hit the water.
Without thinking he let go of the leash and started to take off his shirt to dive after it. Suddenly
the wateroo that was out of the cage jumped straight over the side and disappeared.
Dad said that he was really frightened, and was about ready to pack it in and go bush because