Food seemed more abundant, too, or maybe they were becoming more adept hunters. Yariko was the first to bring down a small mammal with a bow and arrow. Julian was impressed; he hadn’t really taken her bows seriously before. After that, they shot one nearly every evening before setting out on the river again. Dr. Shanker and even Julian became reasonable shots as long as the target was perfectly still and no more than twenty feet away—not an impossible happenstance, as it turned out, the animals not knowing enough to be frightened of humans. Not only did they eat well, but Julian was able to study many kinds of mammals and began to note subtle differences between them.
Placental mammals from that period were all very much alike, and especially among insectivores the fossils were so similar that even defining genera was difficult, much less species. Julian was fascinated by the thought that from such conservative creatures, small brown eaters of whatever they could find, came the whole panoply of Tertiary mammals: the great cats, mastodons, ruminants, sloths, pangolins, cetaceans, bats, rodents, primates. It made him wonder: of all the inconspicuous animals known to twentieth-century zoologists, which ones would diversify into new species, while the others disappeared? What would life be like, sixty-five million years after the time of Homo sapiens?
Once they woke up in the middle of the day in a pouring rain. Julian sat up, his hair streaming and the drops drumming on the platform. The light was so gray that he could not even tell what time of day it was. The rain had knocked down leaves, which stuck to his skin uncomfortably, and the water felt cold.
Yariko was already awake. She was sitting on the edge of the platform, water dripping from her hair, and dripping off her feet that dangled over the edge. She gave him a small smile and said, “You look like a drowned rat.”
“You look like a drowned primate,” Julian countered. He felt awkward; once again they had fallen asleep with his arm over her, as had become habit, but it didn’t seem to mean very much. Yariko needed his companionship as he needed hers, certainly, but he felt no greater emotion coming from her. And until he did, he was not going to push his own feelings on her—not when they were all so vulnerable. Yariko sitting up in the rain looking cold and unhappy, rather than choosing to curl up against him for warmth, made him doubly unhappy.
They agreed that it was impossible to sleep, and climbed down to see how Dr. Shanker was taking the rain. They found him squatting in the boat with Hilda; several of the palm-leaf mats were propped up on sticks and tented over his head. He wasn’t much drier than they were. The boat was in a deep puddle, and the air inside his tent was heavy with the smell of wet dog.
Together they dragged the boat through the mud to the river. When they climbed aboard and took up positions, they were covered in mud as well as being wet and cold.
The opposite bank was almost unseen in the gray rain although the river had been steadily narrowing as it went west. Seen from out in the middle of the stream the banks took on a ghostly quality, appearing and disappearing in the grayness. The water seethed and hissed in the heavy rain. It was difficult to tell if they were making progress, because they couldn’t see any landmarks to judge by. The makeshift floorboards were black from the wet, rubbing against the bottoms of their legs and causing rashes. Hilda curled up in the bow in a profound depression and refused to raise her head all day. Eventually Yariko propped up some of the frond mats over their heads, but the whole wobbly structure fell overboard and floated away.
For several hours they paddled miserably, not talking, hardly even looking up. Finally Julian raised his head to shake the sopping hair from his eyes and caught a glimpse of something moving on the shore.
“Stop,” he hissed, suddenly attentive.
“Is this your Ornithomimus that you keep talking about?” Dr. Shanker said irritably. “Fine time he picked to show up.”
“Quiet.” Julian stopped paddling and the boat swung around. “I don’t think it knows we’re here.” Ornithomimus was a peculiar and rare theropod about which very little was known. He longed to see one.
At first he thought it might be Ornithomimus, but as the boat drew closer he glimpsed its face for an instant. It was chewing on wet leaves. It must have been a hadrosaur, because of the wide duck-bill shape of the mouth, but there might have been a crest rising up from the back of the head; it was hard to tell. Then the rain closed in again and the bank disappeared.
“Did you see the crest?” Julian whispered in excitement.
“What crest?” Dr. Shanker said. “What animal? I can’t see a Goddamn thing.”
“I saw the animal, but I didn’t see a crest,” Yariko said. “What did it look like?”
“A long, tubular crest, curving backward, on the head. You didn’t see it?”
“No,” she said, but she admitted the view wasn’t very clear.
“Parasaurolophus,” Julian said, picking up his paddle. “For goodness sake, let’s paddle to the shore and get a better view of it.”
“What’s the significance of it?” Yariko turned the steering oar toward the bank.
“Whether it’s still extant. It was once very common, but the crested hadrosaurs by and large died out by the late Maastrichtian.”
The river was shallow near the bank and the bow of the boat stuck in the ooze on the bottom. The leaves stirred; the creature must have snuck away into the forest at their approach. Julian was disappointed, but he stared intently into the dripping foliage, hoping to catch a glimpse of it running away. He saw nothing except the wet jungle and the rain.
Yariko crawled over to him. “Are you sure it wasn’t just a branch, sticking up behind its head?” she asked.
“No,” Julian said sadly. “I’m not sure. I’ll never know now, will I.”
“Julian,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder, “there’re too many mysteries for you to solve them all.”
He leaned over the edge of the raft to inspect the ground where the animal had been standing; but if it had left any footprints, they were already turned to mud and puddles in the rain.
Dr. Shanker’s voice startled him. “Whitney! We’re not pulling to the bank every time you want to look for a dinosaur. We’ll be eaten alive. Start paddling!”
Julian never again saw anything resembling Parasaurolophus. If it lived at that time, in the higher floodplains of the river, it must have been either very rare or exceedingly shy.
Dr. Shanker picked up a stone and threw it at the underside of the loft in the tree. He had settled on this method of waking up the others, although Julian could never tell if he was being discrete or was too lazy to climb the tree. If discrete, it was not necessary: he and Yariko had still done nothing more than sleep and talk together on their private loft.
Julian sat up, swung his legs over the edge, and peered down bleary-eyed at the ground. The sun was high and the forest was suffused with the greenish light of midday. “What’s up? It’s still broad day.” He wasn’t happy about being woken.
“Julian,” Dr. Shanker said, peering up anxiously, and Julian knew instantly that something was wrong by the use of his first name. “Hilda’s gone. She doesn’t answer, she’s not anywhere nearby. I think something’s happened to her.”
Julian ran his fingers through his damp hair. “What do you mean, gone? When did she go?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I woke up and she was missing.”
“She’s exploring,” Julian said, still grumpy from the early wake-up. “Leave her alone.”
“She should have been back by now,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for a long time. I’m telling you, something happened.”
Julian sighed and began to pick his way down the tree. He’d expected something like this to happen eventually. For weeks now Hilda had stayed quietly beside them, only wandering short distances, and it was too much to expect of a curious dog in a fabulous new place.
As they’d progressed inland the ground had become more dry under foot. Now they were surrounded by climax forest with a firm ground, c
arpeted with dead leaves and shot here and there with ferns and mushrooms. It was ideal ground for an active dog to explore. She had probably followed a scent trail into the forest and was beyond earshot. Julian had little hope of finding her, unless she returned on her own—if she could.
They inspected the ground everywhere around the tree, and saw nothing to show which way she had gone.
“I used to think she could always take care of herself,” Dr. Shanker said, “but with some of the animals here, I’m not so sure. She’s very fast, though. I can’t believe a two legged animal could possibly outrun her.”
Yariko poked her head over the edge of the platform. “What’s happening?” she said. Then glancing around, “Where’s Hilda? Did she run off?” Julian nodded, and she climbed over the edge of the platform and down to the ground.
“I should have kept her on the rope,” Dr. Shanker said. “Talk about delays. We’ll never reach the mountains in time.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Yariko. “Dogs don’t get lost that easily. When did she go?”
He explained again.
It seemed a poor idea to wander through the forest searching for her, since she could have gone in any direction. Neither did it seem wise to split up and call for her, but that’s what they did: Yariko remaining by the tree at Julian’s insistence while he and Dr. Shanker went in opposite directions along the bank for a short way, calling for Hilda.
Julian realized how little he’d been using his voice lately when he became hoarse by the tenth yell of “Hiiiildaaaa!” Nervous of leaving Yariko alone, he soon turned and made his way back downstream to their tree. Yariko wasn’t there; she was twenty feet away bogged down in a tangle of undergrowth, calling for Hilda.
Dr. Shanker soon joined them; he had seen and heard nothing.
The sun turned toward afternoon as they looked at each other.
Yariko lifted her head suddenly. “What was that?”
Julian strained to hear something; then the wind changed and he caught the sound of barking, very faintly. It was coming from deep in the forest.
ELEVEN
The history of mammals is primarily about teeth. Reptiles, excepting a few snakes, have simple teeth designed for slashing and tearing. Mammals, however, have extraordinarily complex and specialized dentition. Many different kinds of teeth exist in the same mouth: incisors, canines, premolars, and molars. They are capable of precision cutting, stabbing, grinding, and even snipping by means of a shearing action, exactly like scissors. If you have ever seen a cat chew a tough piece of meat on the side of its mouth, then you have seen the marvel of carnassial teeth. The mammalian capacity to process food quickly probably underlies our high metabolic rate; that is, we may well have achieved our present ecological importance by means of superior dentition.
—Julian Whitney, Lectures on Cretaceous Ecology
1 September
7:16 PM Local Time
The Creekbend police station was bustling. Early evening was always a busy time, and today even more so. The forensic man, Agent Kayn, had just left his final report; that OSHA man had been in again with his little twitching mustache, telling Earles things she’d found out hours ago; Mark Reng had been located and sent to the lab; and Hann had been hanging around off and on, red-eyed and fiercely fending off any expression of sympathy, trying to pick up bits of information.
At least she was able to give him some positive news when he came in next. “There was no ash or any other . . . remains in the vault,” she explained as he paced her office, smoking a cigarette down to a nonexistent stub. “Nothing. Only those few drops of blood, a lot of fingerprints, and some dog hairs. They weren’t burned to nothing, or vaporized.” When Hann’s expression didn’t change she went on, “Frank may still be OK. There’s no indication that he was killed in the lab.”
“But you said that room got up to three thousand degrees,” Hann argued, as if he was afraid to begin hoping again. “That would have . . . they would be dead. All of them.”
“Yes, but they don’t seem to be. The forensic man says there would be some remains, you know; if nothing else, bits of metal from their clothing, and. . . ,” she meant to say ‘teeth,’ but changed her mind. At the moment Hann was a bereaved relative, not an investigator. “It’s difficult and frustrating not having any clues when people have disappeared,” she said. “And you’ve gone through a lot in the past few hours, thinking about your brother.”
“Half-brother,” Hann corrected her. “Different father.”
“But still your brother. Charlie, why don’t you take the night off, and tomorrow too? Take as long as you need. Just keep remembering we haven’t seen any evidence that Frank isn’t alive.”
“What am I supposed to do, sit in front of the TV all night with a pack of cigarettes?” Hann’s belligerent tone was an indication of his worry. He never spoke to his chief that way. “I want to stay here and work with you. I have to know what happened.”
“All right. It was just a thought, in case you needed time to yourself,” Earles said, wondering what she would do with him. “For now, you could take all these reports and go over them somewhere quiet, and see what you can come up with.” It was busywork; Hann was unlikely to come up with any new ideas. But he needed something to do and she needed her own time to think.
After he left Earles shut her office door; but now Marla Ridzgy was on the phone again sooner than expected.
“There are some indications here, in the notebooks,” she said. “So we may be able to follow the program adjustments they made. But—”
“Did that graduate student I sent over know anything?” Earles interrupted.
“Not really. Whatever they were up to, they kept it secret even from him. But we’ve found some puzzling things. Perhaps there’s another physicist we can discuss this with? The details are technical.”
“I’ll come over,” Earles said, and hung up. She grabbed her belt and opened the door, calling “Hann!” into the corridor. “We’re going to the lab,” she said when they met in the entranceway. Earles was a little annoyed at the physicist’s tone. So the woman didn’t think the police chief would understand “the details.” Well maybe I won’t, she thought, and Hann certainly won’t. But we’ll get the gist all right, and contribute some ideas of our own.
Bowman and Ridzgy were seated side by side in front of the master computer, intently watching lines of code scroll by. Earles waited politely for the sequence to end before speaking.
“Have you found the cause of the vacuum?” she asked.
“No, that’s still unknown. Readings show that the air pressure in the vault dropped suddenly, after the sequence had been run. Don’t touch that,” Bowman added, taking a laboratory notebook away from Hann. “We’ve got them all in order.”
Hann shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. “What does “apparent spatial translocation” mean?” he asked, leaning casually on the counter.
Ridzgy gave him a sharp look. “It means just what it says: an apparent change in location of an object. This notebook is filled with calculations and measurements for some very strange objects.” She opened the notebook again and pointed out a particular page. “See here? Pebbles, beetles—why beetles, of all things? Twigs . . . weighed, then placed in different parts of the lab and observed.”
“Sounds pretty boring to me,” Hann commented.
“What did these beetles and twigs do while being observed?” Earles asked.
Ridzgy and Bowman looked at each other and then up at Earles. “They disappeared,” Ridzgy said at last. “Just like your missing people.”
“That’s her,” Dr. Shanker said after pausing to listen.
It was difficult to pinpoint the direction, especially since the slight breeze distorted the sound. But it seemed to come roughly from the south, straight back from the river. Then the breeze died, and it was silent except for the buzzing of flies.
Dr. Shanker looked back toward the forest with a grim expression. “You two stay h
ere, in case she comes back.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Yariko said, and there was fear in her voice. “We can’t separate. We’ll never find each other again.”
Julian agreed with her. “We have to stay together—always.” He went to the raft, half hauled out on the bank, and began tossing their possessions onto the shore. “Spears, bows, and arrows,” he said. “Enough for all of us. What about this?” He held up the turtle shell.
“Too heavy,” Yariko said. “Anyway, we’ll be back here before long. Right?”
Julian didn’t answer. He glanced once more at the raft: it looked like a child’s creation, rough and crooked, uncomfortable in the extreme, almost laughable; but it had been their home for nearly a month, and he felt strange leaving it for a walk in the forest.
“Too bad we don’t have a ball of string,” he said.
“String? That wouldn’t hold Hilda.” Dr. Shanker grabbed a spear and a bow.
“No, but we could loop it around trees as we went, so we wouldn’t get lost,” Julian explained. “It’s what I used to do as a kid. However, this might do just as well.” He hefted the makeshift stone-headed axe. “We’ll mark the trees as we go.”
“Come on then,” Dr. Shanker said.
They set off into the forest, walking south. Every minute or so Dr. Shanker called out Hilda’s name, but his voice seemed to fall on the dead needles underfoot, unable to penetrate the vast stillness of the forest.
Julian wasn’t the only one feeling nervous about the forest. They’d spent the past few weeks traveling at night, seeing only the moonlit shores of the river, silvered leaves of trees, and a few mysterious black openings into the forest. Now they peered through the trees in uneasy curiosity at this new land. Julian was surprised at how much the terrain had changed. This was clearly a totally different ecosystem, far removed from the sea. Indeed, they must have been five hundred miles from the Inland Sea by now.
Cretaceous Dawn Page 14
