Sometimes I think - I can't help but think - and what would happen if each of our four people once made a different choice? Who would we be then, and would we ever come together?
What would happen if one pregnant Chinese woman from New York listened to her husband and went to the hospital late for the plane?
What would happen if one American in Vietnam waited for the captain, and did not leave his report to the sergeant?
What would happen if another American did not go through the entire source code and notice an extra space?
What would happen if one Japanese did not succumb to the entreaties of his parents?
A Chinese woman would not be another victim of a plane crash, and her husband would not have drunk too much.
After reading the report, the captain would order the arrest of his assistant sergeant and his accomplices, and the American would not have to desert.
The second American would not have entered the university, had not seriously engaged in programming, and would have become not an hacker, but an engineer.
The Japanese would have submitted documents to another faculty, where he initially wanted, would enter and become a scientist.
Sometimes - between sleep and reality, at the time of the bull - I see all this, I see as real as Roanapur ...
... The wind, which hindered working all day, increased in the evening, rustling sand behind the walls of the yurt and howling in the chimney. A kerosene lamp sways slightly overhead, while I sit at a laptop and write an expedition diary.
Today we tried not to say anything - we found a lot of teeth of predatory dinosaurs, we finished contouring the layer and even dug up the tail of the ankylosaurus, because of which Rebecca again had a fight with Matsumoto - my assistant is sure that there will be a whole skeleton, the laboratory assistant insists that we won’t find anything else. And I tend to agree with her - not only because she is my wife. Such finds were described by Russians who worked here sixty years ago.
Outside, the wind is noisy, funny exclamations come from the workers' yurts - the Mongols have some kind of holiday, and they drink a barrel of koumiss, softly click keys under their fingers, and I think about my people. How many years have we been lurking around all kinds of deaf places in search of long dead creatures ... Matsumoto is a course younger than me, from institute times he has been lagging behind me as if attached.
Now, probably, he sits in his yurt and cuts into cards with Benny. Dutch, which, in fact, Richard is an indispensable person, able to control everything that moves - from a camel to an airplane and make any motor work. The generator was turned off half an hour ago, so now he is most likely lying on a bunk with a book in his hands.
Benny is another of my New York discoveries, an electronics master, without whom all our geophysical equipment is a dead weight. He cuts cards with Matsumoto and Tsedendamba, our guide and translator, if, of course, the whole trinity does not drink with the Mongols.
Rebecca is the best assistant, the master of fine work, to which I owe my best skills - not only. Her well-aimed eye and shabby rifle more than once or twice saved us from the troubles of various properties. My wife. The best that has remained in my life after two years of work in New York ... Now she is sleeping, pulling a blanket over her head, very close to me.
With a sigh, I turn off the laptop and pick up a stack of papers. Professor Okajima - that certainly sounds great. But if you are a professor, you are the head of the expedition, and you have to deal with a bunch of papers. Invoices, invoices, statements, reports ...
-Hey Rock, stop it already, Rebecca grumbles through her sleep, “tie it up ...”
- “Hey, Rock, stop it already, the voice of Revi comes through a dream, “tie to sleep!”
I open my eyes. Two-handed stands at the table, tapping on it a black bone from time to time.
- What time is it now? I am interested.
- Six. After half an hour we set sail. Figured out something?
-Yes, I look at her, at the bone in her hand, at the laptop on the table, “the tooth of a tarbosaur.” There are no buyers, and the money they offered was ridiculous, so you can keep it for yourself.
I open the window. The morning city seems strangely unreal, as if everything around is a drawing on thin fabric, a cover of Maya ...
-What are you thinking about, Rock? - takes me out of ponder Revie's voice.
- I dream about unfulfilled. Stupid, isn't it?
-Maybe not, she says, “maybe ...”