Finally they stepped away from the river and made camp under the eaves of the forest. Yariko started a fire and when Hilda suddenly appeared with a raccoon-sized mammal in her mouth, Dr. Shanker confiscated half of it for their dinner.
“And what can we expect from this new terrain?” Yariko asked, as she turned slices of meat on a makeshift grill made of twigs propped on stones.
“Hopefully not lava flows, ash falls, or other unpleasantness,” Dr. Shanker put in, also in a loud voice to be heard over the river. He was clearly in a good mood, now that Hilda was back to normal and the river had been found again.
“I don’t know about other unpleasantness,” Julian said, “but I doubt we see any volcanoes in action, or not what most people call action. Most of the magma activity is below the surface here, and the geology takes place at appropriately geologic time scales.” He shifted his position and dug out a small rock, about two inches across, that was too sharp to sit on. He glanced at it before tossing it away. Granite: not the shale or other sedimentary rocks that had so far been common. No fossils in this rock; but it was interesting nonetheless.
“Look at this,” he said, passing it to Yariko. “Notice the texture.”
She turned it in the firelight and the crystals gleamed faintly. “Texture,” she said, thoughtfully. “Well, it’s not smooth and flat like the fossil rocks you keep breaking open. It’s more grainy. I can see big grains in it, different colors.”
“Exactly. It has large crystals, mostly quartz and feldspar. It’s primarily made of silica and aluminum; lighter elements.”
Yariko handed the rock across the fire to Dr. Shanker.
Julian went back to toasting his chunk of meat. “That may be all the volcanic activity we see.”
“This is volcanic?” Dr. Shanker looked doubtful.
Julian nodded. “It was formed in the slow cooling of a magma intrusion deep underground, where temperature and pressure are high. If you want to get technical, volcanism is an extrusive or surface process, and plutonism is the intrusive, or below the surface, equivalent. But they both involve magma.”
“Then how did this piece get here, if it was formed under the surface?” Yariko asked.
“Uplift, and then erosion of the surface rock. The river brought it here.”
“And is this part of your Boulder Batholith, that we’re trying to reach?” Dr. Shanker looked at the stone with greater interest.
“No, I doubt it. Those are still too far away. This little piece probably comes from a much smaller formation closer to the surface. But it’s a sign we’re entering the right kind of terrain.”
Dr. Shanker tossed away the stone along with his meat-toasting stick. “I suppose we’ll find plenty more, as we go on,” he said. “It seems a hopeful sign. Lecture us more later. Tomorrow. I say we sleep now; we could all use a rest.” He yawned noisily, and Hilda yawned too, with an almost exact imitation of his facial expression. Julian and Yariko both grinned.
The trees by the river were short and none of them were good for climbing. Dr. Shanker curled up on the ground with Hilda, and by habit, although there was no reason, Yariko and Julian found a spot about thirty feet away and out of sight. They crawled under a bush, into a soft pile of leaves.
The pounding of the rapids deadened all sounds from the forest; even Dr. Shanker’s snoring went unheard. The background rumble gave Julian a sense of seclusion and security that he hadn’t felt in a long time.
“It seems hopeful, doesn’t it?” Yariko said out of the darkness beside him, her voice so close that he could feel her breath on his cheek and detect, faintly, the sweet smell of the berries they’d eaten as a desert. “Reaching our goal, I mean. We might really make it, even in the few weeks left. Tonight was the first time I felt confident.”
“Yes . . . we do seem to have made remarkable progress,” Julian answered slowly. He too felt more hope, even certainty of their chances, than ever before. But he felt something else too. With the new hope a sense of dread had begun to creep in: not dread that they’d be stuck in the Cretaceous forever, but dread that they would leave it. “We haven’t talked much about how we’ll live if we don’t get back,” he went on. “Back to our original time, I mean. After all, even if we make it a thousand miles, we have only a vague idea of the right spot; and we can’t know if the lab will be functioning.”
“I suppose it would be practical to have a plan,” Yariko replied. “But the goal is to not stay here, so that’s what we’ve been focused on. Isn’t it?”
Julian caught a slight hesitation before her last two words. “You said you were getting used to living like this, in this time.” He had been thinking about that since she’d said it, in fact. “Maybe I’m getting used to it here too, or the daily requirements have made life more present, more immediate, or something. It’s been easy to forget any other world ever existed. Not always, of course, but more and more often I forget, for long stretches at a time.”
“I do, too,” Yariko said, and she sounded sad. “But I don’t want to. It’s just hard to compare.”
“Yes . . . it’s hard to think about our past lives when we’re so busy in this life. I know our goal is to revert back to the lab, but sometimes it seems like that’s not what we’re focused on.”
“I don’t understand,” Yariko said.
“I mean living—just living, day to day, being with each other, finding food and shelter and keeping ourselves safe in the wild: isn’t that what we’re really doing?”
Yariko was silent for so long that Julian wondered if she’d dropped off to sleep. When she spoke it was in an even softer voice than before, and he had to strain to hear her. “And in a sense it’s a better way to live. No external pressure, everything depends on us, on our own strength and skill and, well, there’s no one from outside of ourselves expecting us to live a certain way or meet certain goals. Certain impossible goals. So many goals that have no hold on my real self, but only on the self I think I have to be. . . .”
“Like Dr. Miyakara?”
“Like Dr., yes, and other things—other titles.”
Like Mrs. Somebody, Julian thought suddenly, but he didn’t say it.
“And what about you?” Yariko’s voice was brighter now but there was still a tug of sadness behind it.
“You mean, is this life better in some ways?” Julian shifted his position and put his arm over Yariko. “Well, I miss things, of course, like my lab and all the work I was doing, and some people, and, well, indoor bathrooms with hot water, to be honest.” Yariko snorted, and he went on. “But I like it here too. Because how can a fossil compare to the real thing? And because . . . because of present company.” He stopped in embarrassment.
“If we ever returned,” Yariko said, “you wouldn’t lose my company. Not now. Not knowing what I know, about you . . . and myself.”
Julian was quiet a moment. “Sometimes you joke about starting a village,” he began, and then paused, changing what he was going to say. “The fact is, I would be happy in the Maastrichtian with you. I would be happy at the University with you. Wherever. It doesn’t matter.”
He fell silent. He felt foolish, especially as Yariko said nothing for a while. He could hear the quickened sound of her breathing.
Then suddenly her head was on his shoulder, heavy and comfortable, and she gave a little laugh. “No one’s ever said that to me before: ‘I’d be happy in the Maastrichtian with you.’ No one’s ever felt that way about me.”
Julian’s heart tightened and then seemed to expand with relief. “Takes a paleontologist, I guess,” he murmured, but he was already on to more serious things, his hand stroking her hair and then moving down her back to pull her in closer. When he found her lips her arms went around him and her whole body shaped itself against his, and it felt absolutely right.
In the morning they stood at the cliff again and looked across the river. The southeast side was thickly forested, but the north-western side was open, vast in the bright sun, brown with bru
sh now losing its leaves, dotted with occasional trees. The Triceratops were gone but their trail was clear, a brown gash meandering across the plains. Julian wondered if they migrated south for the winter, mild though the seasons were. The trail, having fetched up against the river, turned toward the west and followed the bank for about a mile. There it disappeared from view. The creatures had probably found a shallow spot, crossed the river and then continued southward into the plains.
As clear as the trail was the smell. Julian had been close to herds of buffalo and was reminded of the sharp, musky odor that seemed to emanate from the massive bodies. But now the odor emanated from the empty air and trampled ground, and it was a hundred times stronger, stringent and overpowering.
The going looked easier on the opposite bank: more open, less steep and tangled. Julian suggested they cross and follow the Triceratops trail as long as it went west, it being a clear and easy path. The truth was he wanted to travel in the wake of those immense and wonderful animals.
Hilda shot down the rocky, uneven cliff face with no difficulty and stood waiting at the bottom, wagging her tail and laughing up at them. The humans followed more slowly, mainly because Julian helped Yariko rather more than was necessary; she would have done better alone but she accepted the hand he lent through the steepest parts. At the bottom, the two stood together on a slab of rock, his arm over her shoulders, and blinked and squinted in the frigid spray.
Dr. Shanker stood beside them with Hilda. He had a wide grin on his face as he looked at the water. Julian, happy himself on what seemed the loveliest morning he’d ever seen, didn’t wonder at the man’s delight.
“Can we cross here?” he shouted over the roar of the water.
Dr. Shanker turned and looked at him, still grinning. “You might have to go single file,” he yelled back, and gave them an exaggerated wink.
Julian felt Yariko stiffen under his arm; but before he could retort, Dr. Shanker spoke again.
“Come on, Whitney, don’t scowl. It’s about time, really. I didn’t think even you could be that shy, and I know Yorko isn’t. To think of all those days on the riverbank that I confined myself to the bottoms of trees, risking the predators. . . .” Hilda laughed up at him, wagging her tail as she caught the general mood of excitement, and Dr. Shanker reached down to ruffle her ears. “And I get stuck with the dog!”
Julian couldn’t help smiling even as he felt himself blush; in fact his grin rivaled Dr. Shanker’s. Yariko pushed his arm away.
“If we’re going to cross, we’d better have a look—single file,” she said.
Julian reluctantly looked away from her to study the river. The rapids were a daunting sight, pounding and tearing through jagged boulders. But the river was only thirty yards wide now and scattered with so many large rocks that it didn’t look too hard to cross, as long as they didn’t lose their footing. In fact, it almost looked as though a line of rocks had been placed by plan, stretching from one bank to the other.
“Well well, someone’s left a bridge for us,” Dr. Shanker said, indicating the path with his spear. Hilda leapt joyfully through the spray from stone to stone and was soon on the other side, where she shook herself dry and gave an excited bark.
Dr. Shanker followed, using his spear to balance as though he were in a circus on the high wire. He paused before the last leap, a six-foot gap between the last boulder and the shore. Then, gathering himself, he sprang across and landed squarely on the rocky bank. There he stood, leaning on his spear, smiling back as if pleased with himself for such a fine athletic display.
Yariko came next, and Julian brought up the rear. The stones were more slippery than he had expected. He tried to use the spear as a staff, prodding the point of it into the foamy water, searching for the bottom, but the current nearly yanked the pole out of his hand. The roar of the water was almost painful as it boomed off the rocky cliff. It was disorienting, and he felt dizzy. At each jump from one stone to the next he expected to slide into the freezing river and never come out again.
He had just reached the last stone and stood precariously on the uneven surface, measuring the distance to the bank, when he happened to glance up. Looming over the bushes, staring down at Dr. Shanker and Yariko, was the enormous slate-gray face of Triceratops horridus.
Julian froze, the back of his neck tingling. Hilda was oblivious, probably overwhelmed by the enormous stench of Triceratops all around. She wagged her tail and cocked her head at him. Yariko mouthed the word “Coward!” evidently thinking he was afraid to make the last jump.
At that moment the creature barked. It had a rasping tone, unpleasant and much higher pitched than expected given the animal’s size, but quite loud nonetheless. The sound, rising above the thundering of the river, had an instantaneous effect. Yariko, Dr. Shanker, and Hilda turned to look behind them; and Julian lost his footing and tumbled into the river.
Part III
The Triceratops Plain
THIRTEEN
The extinction of a species has been popularized by images of lonely, one-of-a-kind animals lying down to die in despair on dusty plains. In reality, the poignant last-of-its-kind scenario is an invention of modern man, who has also, unfortunately, made it an actuality in some cases. But through most of Earth’s inhabited history, species have come and gone through undramatic and almost imperceptible processes: mingling with others, change of habitat, genetic modifications, gradual loss of diversity and fecundity.
—Julian Whitney, Lectures on Cretaceous Ecology
The current took Julian before he could cry out. He struggled to keep his head above the surface; but with all the foam around the rocks there was no surface to speak of. He caught a mouthful of water and choked, then smashed the side of his head against a stone. His sneakers touched the pebbly bottom for an instant. But he was carried away again, turning and scraping, eyes clenched shut against the spray. Through it all he clutched the spear, and it clunked and bounced against the rocks around him.
When he finally opened his eyes he was below the falls and in the center of the stream, momentarily safe from the rocks, but moving rapidly toward a sharp bend in the river. He tried to swim toward the shore but was so chilled that his arms would hardly move. He gave up and simply drifted, still clutching the spear but not even remembering it. He felt quite peaceful, as if in a dream.
He had no sense of distances. One moment he was drifting down the center of the stream and the next moment the current slammed him against the rocks at the bend. Everything turned into foam again, noise and spray, but he had the presence of mind to clutch onto a point of rock. For a while he hung there, the force of the water pressing him against the rough surface.
The whole adventure had been so rapid and unexpected that Julian’s mind had not caught up with it yet. But as he clung to the rock he realized for the first time how close to death he was. No dinosaur could have done him in more effectively than the freezing water. A shaking, panicking terror came over him. He struggled, and with the help of the spear managed to scramble onto the rocks. That was as far as numbed muscles could go. He would have done better to crawl out of range of the spray, but he lay quietly, one foot still dangling in the river, and the world went dark for a moment.
Yariko looked straight into the ten-foot-long, armored, and horned face of Triceratops horridus. It was so close that its horns almost touched her. Never had she imagined anything so big. It loomed over her, filling all her vision and blocking the sky and the trees. She was unable to move. She stood with her mouth open and her eyes trapped as the scent surrounded her like a cloud.
Close as they were, a myriad of details appeared that she’d never imagined. The face was not gray: it was rust black like the mold on the north side of a tree, and the frill and horns were a light brown unevenly splotched with white. The eyes were small, or appeared so in the vast face, and the corners seethed with flies. But what caught her attention the most, ludicrously, were the ears. Even in her terror it amazed her that the thing had vi
sible ears: long creased ears like a rabbit’s, leaf shaped and covered with hair-like bristles, sticking straight out sideways from behind the eyes. Had any paleontologist guessed that Triceratops had such external ears? She remembered Julian talking about ear holes just behind the eyes, but she thought that even he would be surprised at the reality.
Hilda startled her out of her moment of shock. With a woof that rivaled the Triceratops’ bark she shot around Yariko, nearly knocking her over, and took up a protective stance between the humans and the dinosaur. Yariko watched in amazement as this puny mammal, without horns or frill, faced down a monster whose head alone was ten times her size.
Dr. Shanker was no less overawed. He had turned toward the animal and then staggered backward, falling over his spear and rolling nearly into the river. Now he picked himself up rushed forward to grab Hilda. “Leave it!” he shouted, but his voice was a tiny squeak lost in the roar of the river and the sharp, rasping bark of the animal.
He grabbed Yariko’s arm. “Back away slowly,” he hissed in her ear. “Don’t look it in the eyes.”
Yariko gave a snort on the edge of hysteria. From their six-foot proximity it was physically impossible to look the thing in both eyes at once.
In answer, the Triceratops lowered its head further and shook its horns at them; horns a yard long and very sharp at the tips.
“Julian,” Yariko whispered as they took a step back, and another. “Did he make it back across?” She was sure the thing wouldn’t follow them into the river; then again, she wasn’t sure at all.
They took another step backward. Hilda didn’t move; with one front paw raised and her lips drawn back from her white teeth, she kept up a continuous, deep growl that vibrated in Yariko’s head and chest.
Cretaceous Dawn Page 17
