"Perry, Steve - OtherToys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

Damn Him!

"We've got the measurements on the skull, Doc. Looking at two meters, three,
from snout to the base."

The air in the cave was damp and smelled of seaweed and salt spray, the late
autumn winds had freshened and, coming off the water, they drove into the hollow
sometimes with a force to make the crags and crannies howl. Like blowing across
the mouth of a Coke bottle, Lipton thought.

There were only five students in the cave now. It was late, and while the lamps
on their stands kept the darkness well at bay, the night's cold touched them
with bolder fingers.

Lipton walked over to where the half-excavated skull lay. The bone was nearly
clean where it was exposed. Even though the remains had not been there very
long, the damp air and rot had done their work, and small scavengers had taken
their share of the thing's flesh.

It seemed to Lipton that the beast wore an Archaic Smile, and he said as much to
O.C., who stood aiming the laser tape at the skull.

"Archaic Smile?"

"The term for the expression on the faces of many Greek statues from the Archaic
period," Lipton said. "From around 750-500 B.C. Some schools of thought have it
that the smile resulted from the Greeks' belief that the expression reflected
perfect health; others believe that the smile simply represented a certain
amount of technical difficulty in carving a curved mouth around a rather
block-like head, which was all the rage at the time." O.C. nodded.
"Interesting."

"Our friend here seems to be wearing an almost Mona Lisa-like smirk."

"Yeah, it does kinda look like that. Wonder what he was thinking about?"

"That we'll never know. But when the world finds out what we have here, we'll
have reason for plenty of smiles of our own."

Truly, Lipton thought, as O.C. continued his measurements. While every reptile
was unique, more or less by definition, no one had ever seen a creature like
this before. And it had not lain moldering here for tens of millions of years,
either. This was his coelacanth; this was going to set the scientific world on
its ear! His career, steady but undistinguished, was made. His students' careers
were made. He was at the scene of the biggest find in history and no one would
ever be able to take that away from him! Not even the despicable Noel.

I am going to die. I cannot eat, I cannot sleep, I cannot stir myself even to
defecate. I lie in pools of filth, waiting for the end. Forgive me, dear Lord,