"Utley, Steven - The Despoblado" - читать интересную книгу автора (Utley Steven)

"I've never been able to decide if he's not all there or if he just tunes me out. Or some combination of the two. He may be mentally handicapped or something. I'm surprised he got past screening."

"Interesting library they've got on this tub."

"Mm?"

"Books. Voltaire. The Wind in the Willows. Someone on this barge reads books."

"Well, what else is there for someone to do on a barge?"




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Behind them, the big gray ship shrank to an insignificant speck on the landscape and was finally lost to view. Ahead, the highest visible point was a particular patch of orange rising slightly above the succession of swampy mounds. The patch resolved itself into the roof of a small prefabricated storage building at the base camp. Moored amid the islets, the base camp itself was a floating platform supporting the storage shed and smaller structures. A small motorboat tied up at a low pier sat motionless in the water, and there was no movement on or around the platform until Walton brought Karen close. Then the motorboat bobbed in the backwash, and a tall, thin, sun-darkened woman stepped out of the operations shack and stood watching and waiting until the barge was secured.
Moen gave Michelle a grin and gestured expansively. "Our home away from home! And there's our charming and lovely hostess, the Dame Paleontologist herself."

Walton, carrying a handful of mail, stepped onto the platform, with Michelle and Moen right behind. Walton gruffly introduced Michelle to Merry Grenon, who regarded her with undisguised amazement. After a moment, the older woman said, "What brings you this way?"

"I hope to get a book of photos out of this."

"Well, I hope you don't break a nail or anything."

Michelle's smile never wavered. "Would you mind if I took pictures and asked questions?"

"Not at all."

Close by, Moen favored the two women with a smile, and to the older he said, "Be careful what you say to her, Merry, she's got a sociopolitical agenda."

Merry Grenon said to Michelle, "Come on, I'll show you around," and then, by some means the young woman did not quite understand but had to admire, effortlessly detached her from Moen and, preceded by Walton, steered her toward a shed used as both laboratory and operations center. Moen obviously wanted to follow, but then he noticed that Wicket had begun unloading supplies onto the platform, and he quickly reboarded Karen to watch over his crates like a mother hen.

On one side within the shed sat radio equipment, and a small cabinet in a corner held cooking utensils. Two dented but clean-looking refrigerators stood in opposite corners; the door of one bore an emphatically hand-lettered sign: NO FOOD!!!, and an excellent reproduction of Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte; the door of the other bore an equally emphatic sign: FOOD ONLY !!!, and an equally good reproduction of a van Gogh, The Potato Eaters. The rest of the cramped space was given over to a long workbench and racks of specimen trays.

Walton asked, "Where're the others?"

"Helen's ashore. Pete took the other boat upriver to try and catch himself some sharks."

Surprise and alarm struggled for supremacy in Walton's expression. "There are sharks here?"

Grenon plainly savored the moment. "Spiny freshwater sharks."

"Well, I wish to hell somebody'd told me. I've been known to dangle my feet in this river."

Merry Grenon offered him a pitying look. "We didn't know there were sharks here until about an hour ago. There're tons of things we don't know about this place, Bud. That's why we're here. Anyway, Pete found a decomposing spiny shark washed up on the bank, and now he's all excited. Here, I'll show you." She went to the refrigerator marked NO FOOD!!!, opened it, withdrew a metal tray. There was a thick odor of decomposition and preservative. In the tray lay a desiccated fish carcass about six inches long, blunt-headed, with ganoid scales and paired rows of spikelike fins along its belly.

"What's this," Walton demanded, "the chihuahua of the shark family?"