by Greg Bear
Wetherford, the representative of the advance party, showed up just before nightfall: a short young Englishman in slacks and a baggy white shirt stained with food and jungle green. He seemed a little under the weather.
"The beer here is terrible" was the first thing he said to Shellabarger, before they shook hands. "Made from tree sap, of all the bloody things. Anteater piss, I call it. James Wetherford." He extended his hand and Shellabarger gave it a perfunctory shake.
The trainer looked him over angrily. "You're the only one here?" he asked.
"Yes. I've been down with some fever." He leaned to one side to see around Shellabarger. "Also, I got in an argument with some soldiers, with a bloody colonel no less, and the Mendez woman, Dona Catalina, decided it would be better for me to stay here to meet you. They're here representing Caracas— Betancourt and Gallegos. I see the cars are loaded. Everything's ready to go?"
"You're drunk. You've been drunk for days," Shellabarger said. "Who's paying you?"
"Mr. Schoedsack. Why?"
"Because if Lotto Gluck were paying you, I'd fire you right here and now."
"Well," Wetherford said owlishly. "I'm spared that, aren't I?"
Peter kept the irony of this remonstration to himself.
OBie and Ray took advantage of the golden light of late afternoon, shooting views of the train and the town. They also filmed Shellabarger inspecting the cars. He had done this job to his satisfaction earlier, but OBie asked him to do it again. The trainer's demeanor before the whirring camera was a little wooden.
"Vince, for a man who's been in showbiz so long, you're stiff as a board," OBie said.
Shellabarger shrugged. "I'm not going to be in showbiz much longer."
Wetherford stood to one side, a crooked smile on his face. "If anybody needs me," he said, "I'm right here."
Peter's main memory of that night was that ants were everywhere. Small red ants and large black ants crawled in lines along the dirt and up the walls of the buildings. They crawled into his sleeping bag, where he found them waggling their antennae and lifting their fierce mandibles. Billie reassured him that these were just town ants, not veintecuatros, but they still nipped him pretty good.
He used this opportunity to write in his journal, something he had been neglecting. He recorded the important events of the day, but not his thoughts about men and alcohol. He did not think that National Geographic would be very interested.
At four in the morning, Anthony roused him for his share of the watch and they got up in the warm stillness beneath an unblinking haze of stars. Ray had preceded them and he showed them how to use rush brooms to brush ant trails away from the tracks and the train cars. "Wouldn't want Dagger to get swarmed, would we?" Ray asked with a big yawn.
With first light, Shellabarger joined Anthony and Peter and the others awoke to the smell of coffee brewed in a big steel jug by the stationmaster. The roustabouts and film crew gathered around. Billie and the four other pilots joined them with seven large, fresh catfish, which were soon gutted and fried for breakfast. The strong black coffee, syrupy with sugar, made Peter buzz with happy anxiousness to get going, to get to work, and the catfish, served with cassava bread broken from large flat wheels, tasted better than any breakfast he remembered eating in years.
They boarded the train and everybody swung their hats and cheered as they pulled out of the station of San Pedro de las Bocas. The engineer tugged a raucous squeal from the engine's steam whistle. The animals in their tied-down cages replied with a chorus of bellows and screams and the monkeys in the jungle howled in turn. It sounded energetic and chaotic and cheerful. The strong coffee made everything seem cheery to Peter.
They all sat on old wooden seats in one dusty passenger car, jostled back and forth on the irregular tracks. At times the train seemed to crawl, especially around curves; OBie said you never knew when a tree might have gone down and blocked the tracks. He leaned back over his seat to where the roustabouts were playing poker and said, "You boys good with axes?"
Kasem hid his hand, rolled his eyes, and jerked his thumb at Shellabarger. "He's the boss man. If you want us to build a bridge, tell him, and he'll tell us."
Shawmut and Osborne laughed. "We'll do the bridge building," said Shawmut. "You guys just cut the logs."
The jungle presented an unbroken wall on either side of the tracks, comprised of all manner of palms, some standing on tall stilts rooted in the floor, and kapok trees, rising above the forest with thick round green crowns. Giant ferns pushed out fronds to brush the windows of the passenger car. Peter saw many other trees he could not identify, and Anthony, looking quickly through a guidebook, shook his head and grinned. "The leaf shapes change depending on whether a tree is old or young . . . We need a botanist!"
He did manage to identify a huge saman tree, spreading over its section of forest like a giant's umbrella.
"Grandfather of the forest," OBie said. "Glad to see vigor in old age. There's hope for us fogies yet."
The train's passage disturbed hordes of squirrel monkeys, which rushed off through the canopy, and Peter saw several green parrots and one macaw, bright red with blue markings.
Shellabarger sat slumped in his seat, snoring after his vigil during the night. He had kept watch the longest. Behind him, face pale in the green light from the jungle, Wetherford stared out the windows at nothing in particular, lips puckered as if about to whistle.
The train began its long climb. With frequent tenor blasts on the steam whistle, it dragged its line of cars along the rock edge of the Caroni, past a broad, foaming set of falls. Mist rose in clouds and drifted across the tracks and forest, wetting the glass and swirling in through the open windows.
Three hours into the journey, the train crossed a log trestle bridge over a tributary feeding into the Caroni. The tributary tumbled white and slick green and black over rocks two hundred feet below the laboring train. There would be many more such rushing tributaries and trestle bridges the next few miles.
Shellabarger came awake and went to the rear to look out over the flatcars. When he returned, he lit up a cigar he had bought in Puerto Ordaz. The smoke swirling through the car smelled worse than old tires burning, but Peter did not dare complain.
"Lots of plants and small animals here come from the tepuis, particularly from El Grande," Shellabarger said. "Bugs, flowers, orchids—hardwoods—nuts no white man's ever tasted. Worth a hell of a lot more than gold. Someday, somebody's going to see the value."
"A bit hypocritical for a circus man, don't you think?" Wetherford inquired, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the back of the next seat. He surveyed Shellabarger coolly.
"Guilty as charged," Shellabarger said, unruffled. Wetherford seemed to rank somewhere behind the ants in his estimation, not worth being impolite to. The Englishman did not appear to be bothered by this.
"Yes, well, at least you're trying to make amends."
"So," Anthony said, "what is your line of work, Mr. Wetherford?"
"Guilty, myself, truly guilty," Wetherford said. "Until recently I worked as a secretary for Creole Oil. Mr. Shellabarger, have you a fag to spare?"
Shellabarger handed him a pack of cigarettes and he took two. "Blessings of the New World, tobacco," Wetherford said, lighting up. "Or better yet, revenge. And a match?"
They reached a leveling out of the landscape and the jungle thinned, giving way to broad expanses of grassland. Anthony and OBie pored over a map and agreed that they were now on a lava ledge that had risen up beneath El Grande and pushed it several hundred feet higher, "Hundreds of millions of years ago," Anthony said.
Wetherford leaned over the map with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He puffed several times and narrowed his eyes against the smoke, then plucked away the cigarette and said, "Recent thinking says it could have been over a billion years ago."
"You're a geologist?" Anthony asked.
"I listened to the oil men. When they left, I stayed, because . . . you see"—he waved the cigare
tte with self-conscious style—"they were ever so much smarter than me."
"The plateaus of El Grande are cut through with lava flows, like marbling in ice cream," Anthony said. "Some of it seeped out to form caps, and erosion has worked all the way around them, like big mushrooms."
"All true, and wonderful stuff," Wetherford said. "You worked for oil men, too, eh?"
Anthony smiled. "Guilty as charged."
Peter did not know whether to like the Englishman or not. He stared out the left side of the train at El Grande, now so huge a presence that it blocked the sky to the east. Ledges in the escarpment supported whole forests, rising in narrow terraces to the clouds.
Billie walked forward, staring out the windows at the scattering of trees along the relatively barren highlands. He sat down next to Peter. "Look outside," he said quietly, and waved at the window on the left side, then made a graceful flip of the hand toward the front of the train.
Peter looked but saw nothing.
"There," Billie said. Peter suddenly spotted a lone naked brown man just yards below the window, with a neatly cut bowl of black hair, standing in tall grass, carrying a gourd, a black bag, and a bow. The man watched the train pass, then dropped to his knees and vanished. Billie smiled at Peter. "More, soon," he said.
"I'll bet Monte and Coop are both at Uruyen," OBie said. Uruyen was the closest airstrip, about eight miles from the railhead. "I'll bet they've flown in to meet us. That would be grand."
They reached the railhead after six hours. Shellabarger paced for the last hour, sick with worry about the dinosaurs. "They 've gone hours without water, much longer than I planned," he said. As soon as the train had stopped, they all disembarked from the passenger car. Shellabarger ordered the roustabouts to bring barrels of water up from the last car, which carried their supplies.
Peter held his hand above his eyes to block out the sun until Anthony slapped a floppy bush hat over his head. The railhead team—a crowd of at least twenty Indians and mestizos, dressed in white trousers and baggy white shirts—smiled and shook hands with the new arrivals. They gestured at the waiting trucks, and Billie and the four pilots, now drivers, inspected the big muddy vehicles with critical eyes, exchanging questions and comments.
Peter looked up and saw a large wooden crane newly erected by the side of the tracks. Besides the crane and three shacks roofed with palm leaves and one ramshackle building covered with corrugated steel, the railhead was a void butted against thick forest.
The only sour note was the appearance of a short, stocky Army officer and three of his men. Their uniforms were rumpled and their broad belts and black shoes scuffed and covered with specks of mud and mold. Two of the soldiers wore dusty, dented helmets. The third went bareheaded. The officer waved papers with their orders. They were to verify that the visitors were all legitimate, authorized by the government in Caracas. The Indian and mestizo workers seemed to make them nervous. Shellabarger told the officer politely enough that he could verify all he wanted, they could not stop now or the animals would suffer.
"Would you want the animals to die and everybody around the world to know it was you that made them die?" he asked the stocky officer coldly.
The man drew himself up, took a deep breath, and said, "Senor, I am a mild man, but the colonel is most irritable. He is on Pico Poco now. I please him, not history. Nevertheless, I will do my best to hurry."
The tarps were removed from the cages, and the animals got their first clear sight of El Grande. Blinking in the sun, they made quite an uproar. Dagger slapped his tail against the cage, making it rattle alarmingly. One by one, the roustabouts poured water from drums into their drinking troughs. The Indians gathered around, their faces filled with fear and reverence.
"The muse calls," Anthony said, lifting his camera. He smiled at Peter and ran off to take more pictures.
Peter wondered what he was supposed to do. Shellabarger hadn't called for him, and he did not want to be in the way. He decided to climb up on the flatbed car beside Sammy and keep him company.
Wetherford and Ray walked by, talking about the trees. "Hundreds of species of hardwoods," Wetherford said, "and figs and of course the lianas, the creepers . . ." The Englishman looked up, shading his eyes against the sun. His eyes met Peter's. "Take a walk down to the river?" he asked. Peter looked for OBie.
The film crew was unloading the camera cases again and OBie was already heading down the trail.
"We're going to scout," Ray said.
"I'll stay here," Peter said. He felt the dinosaurs might need him—Shellabarger might call for him. Or he might see something else he could do.
"All right," Wetherford said. Ray tipped his hat and they followed OBie.
"Peter!" Shellabarger called. Peter answered and the trainer came up to the car, frowning and squinting at the jungle. "The animals can eat some of this stuff," he said. "Sammy can eat just about anything and survive. Fill his cage with creepers and leaves. Give him a small log if you find one. He won't eat what he can't tolerate. Fresh food will do the herbivores a lot of good."
"What about Dagger?" Peter asked.
"Last side of beef until El Grande," Shellabarger said. Keller and Kasem walked up beside him.
"Real ripe." The head roustabout pinched his nose. "Just the way he likes it."
"If you find any bugs, give ' em to the struthios," Shellabarger added. "A couple more days on the river, and then we're at Washington Falls. Where's your father?"
"Taking pictures."
"He needs to sign some chits. Find him, then help pick foliage."
Peter picked vegetation and piled it in the cage for Sammy. He found a few impressive-looking beetles and cockroaches, but Dip and Casso took little interest in them.
After he was done, he walked with his father, Ray, and Wetherford down to the water. OBie stood at the river's edge, stamping his feet to test the ground. The Indian foreman of the crew that had erected the crane stamped his foot also and smiled at OBie. He spoke in a language none of them knew, and OBie kept shaking his head. "You speak Indian?" he asked Wetherford.
"Sorry, no, but it sounds like Camaracotas."
"Well, my Spanish is poor, and my Indian is nonexistent," OBie said.
Shellabarger and Billie came down the trail last. Billie stepped in to interpret. "This man's name is Jorge," he said. "He is the jefe here."
"I gathered as much," Shellabarger said, lighting up another terrible cigar.
"He speaks Camaracotas and a little Spanish and Portuguese. He came here from Roraima in Brazil when he heard there was work. He is an expert woodworker, and he says not to worry about the mud, because there will be a log road by the end of the day."
"Well, I see how we'll lift the boats off the train cars," Shellabarger said, "but how will we get them down here?"
Billie spoke to Jorge and listened with his head cocked to one side. "With ropes and log rollers. He says it is no problem. They loaded the trucks onto motorized rafts two weeks ago and it worked fine, but the river rose and floated the log road away. So they will build it again." Jorge spoke again, and Billie added, "There has been much rain on El Grande. He says the falls will be spectacular."
"Has he seen them?" Shellabarger asked.
"Oh, yes. His father took him there when he was a boy. That is why his name—because of the falls, and because of Professor Challenger. His father remembers you, senor, and also Senor Gluck."
Jorge smiled proudly and stepped forward to offer his hand. Shellabarger took the hand and shook it firmly. "Tell him the crane looks like good work. His men are fine obreros. I expect the road will be rebuilt just fine."
Billie told Jorge, who nodded vigorously, then went off to instruct his men.
"What about the cages?" OBie asked. "How can we load them on the boats down here?"
"We can't," Shellabarger said, clamping his cigar and chewing its end. A trail of smoke stung Peter's eyes. "We use the crane to unload the boats, we lift the cages and swing them out onto t
he boats, and then we roll them together right into the water."
Wetherford whistled.
"Yeah," Shellabarger said, "well, if anybody else comes up with something better . . ." He looked up the river. "What about using the radio and finding out how things are up there? Maybe we can talk to the Mendezes, or whatever their name is."
"Our radio is not working, senor," Billie said. "The air, the mountain . . . a storm somewhere north." He shrugged.
"Yeah, well," Shellabarger said, "that's just fine." He looked at Peter and decided the word he really wanted to use was perhaps too strong for this company. "Hell," he muttered, and blew smoke at a cloud of enthusiastic flies.
Wetherford pointed to the soldiers, standing unhappily to one side. "Not too tough to see their problem," he said. "So few of them, and so many Indians."
"The Indians came here to work," Peter said.
"That was just the beginning," Wetherford said. He rubbed the three-day growth of beard on his chin. "El Grande holds them together. Take our friend Billie, for example. An upright, well-educated lad." Wetherford gave Peter a knowing look. "And here we are with all these very interesting animals. Our troubles are not over, young fellow."
The workers had already cut and stacked long, straight white logs in a clearing not far from the railhead. They now hauled the logs down to trackside and began to reconstruct the road, laying them perpendicular to the tracks. Billie watched the workers intently. Peter stood close beside him, hoping to clear up his thinking about what Wetherford had said. Billie frowned as the logs passed.
"To some of the families, the tribes, those trees are sacred," he said to Peter. "They agree to cut them only for the Challenger."
Shellabarger took Peter by the shoulder and kept him close, "For luck," he said, as they tested the crane on a boat. Anthony snapped pictures and Wetherford stayed to one side, keeping his mouth shut for once. Ray recorded the scene.
"OBie told me to stand by here in case something goes wrong," he told Peter as their paths crossed. "I feel like a vulture."
