Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs

by Max McCoy

  Indy's face was red with rage.

  "The fact that you knew you were onto the story of the century—no, of the millennium—probably didn't hurt, either," he said. "How could I have been so stupid? The constant questions about this or that, your demand to accompany us all of the way... it all makes perfect sense, now."

  "He is still my father," Joan said. "And I had a desperate desire to find him. And I didn't lie when I talked about my family's belief in the basic goodness of humanity. But my editors at the Star laughed at me when I suggested they send me to Mongolia, so I had to come up with something to get here. The habit was a Halloween costume I had worn to a party earlier in the week, so I decided to use it. I can see now how wrong that was, but it made sense at the time."

  "It's called rationalization," Indy said.

  "I know what I did was wrong," she said.

  "And you seemed to enjoy it," Indy said. "You played the slutty nun to the hilt. You seemed to like it so much that I'll bet it was hard for you to leave the costume behind."

  "I was lonely and I was scared much of the time," Joan said. "I'm just human, you know."

  "Oh, you're something more than human. Were you going to tell me that you weren't really a nun before or after you got me into the sack, Sister?"

  She looked at him.

  "Sorry, it's a hard habit to break." She laughed in spite of herself.

  "Look, Dr. Jones. We both know you would have gone on this expedition whether I was a nun, a newspaper reporter, or had two heads and purple hair. So what's the damage?"

  She took off his fedora, draped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. Hard.

  Indy pulled himself away.

  "Sorry," he said. "I don't give my heart to liars. Besides, I'm in love with somebody else."

  "You mean that witch who dumped you?"

  "Did you say witch or—"

  "You heard me," Joan said. "I can't believe you're carrying a torch for her after all she's put you through, and obviously I don't know the half of it. But I can gather enough from the conversations you've had with Brody and Granger that you're way too good for her."

  "You don't understand," Indy protested.

  "And what is it that I need to understand about Indiana Jones?" she asked.

  "That I'm a hopeless, raving romantic," he said. "That I keep my word to my friends. That I don't sleep around when I'm in love with somebody else. That I don't lose my values just because I'm a few-thousand miles from home. That there are things in this world which science can't explain but which just maybe the human heart can. And that I would never, ever date a girl who dresses like a nun."

  The first shell from the howitzer blasted a hole in the wall of the lamastery the size of a bushel basket.

  "Time to abandon ship," Indy said. "We can't hold off Tzi's army with one machine gun and five rounds of ammunition."

  "If only we had more weapons," Granger said.

  "We don't, so we'll have to make a run for it," Indy said.

  "Even if we had weapons," Starbuck said, "I would not resort to killing. That would make us no better than the animals beyond the gates."

  "Sometimes it's better to be a living animal," Granger said, "than a dead philosopher. If you find some guns, you let me know."

  "Professor," Indy said. "I'm sorry, but I think that Tzi is going to blow this monastery to bits. You need to tell the brothers to come with us."

  "They'll be fine," Starbuck insisted as he lifted a dinosaur egg from the bed of straw and slipped it into Indy's satchel. "They are used to playing this cat-and-mouse game with Tzi and his men, and they will scatter when we leave. I am hopeful that it will buy us some time."

  "Where are we going?" Joan asked.

  "Through a narrow passage in the cliffs," Starbuck said. "There is a valley beyond which has been untouched by time. We must be careful, because the path is perilous, and we must make sure that Tzi's men do not follow us into the valley. I only wish there were another place that we could take refuge, but I am afraid it is our last hope—and the last hope of our three little ones."

  Starbuck placed another of the eggs in a straw-filled leather pouch and handed it to Joan, who slung it beneath her shoulder like a purse.

  "Let me," Granger offered as Starbuck placed the last egg into a pouch. "I don't have anything to do with my hands, and you're going to be busy leading the way. I promise that I'll take good care of it."

  "Hey," Indy said, and whistled at Granger. "Nice purse."

  "You should talk," Granger returned. "You've carried that little bag of yours around the world three or four times, I understand."

  "This," Indy said, "is a satchel. That, however, is a purse."

  "All right, then," Starbuck said, taking up his staff. He rapped on the back wall of the tower, breaking away the plaster over a hidden passage. When they were gone, the monks had instructions to patch over the doorway before abandoning the lamastery.

  Starbuck took up a bundle of torches, lit one from the nearest brazier, and turned to face the group. "To the promised land," he said, then entered the passage.

  "Religion does run in the family," Joan snapped as she cut in front of Indy to catch up with her father.

  "Apparently so does insanity," Indy muttered.

  Granger was the last to file into the passage, and as he did so, a shell from the howitzer hit the tower, blowing the top off and spilling the braziers onto the plank floor. It also drove a splinter from the ceiling into the leather bag that Granger carried, and a trickle of amniotic fluid began to mark the trail behind them.

  8

  The Happy Valley

  "This passage was staked by the ancients, and it is full of traps for the unwary," Starbuck called back. "I'm sure you've experienced nothing like it before."

  Indy smiled.

  The path led deep into the mountain, and the first obstacle they encountered was a narrow footbridge of natural stone that crossed a gaping chasm.

  "Be careful," Starbuck warned as he carefully put one foot in front of the other, like a tightrope walker. "This abyss has no bottom."

  "Any chasm that is too deep from one to easily see the bottom," Granger remarked, "is said to be bottomless." He picked up a stone and, when he was in the center of the bridge, let it drop from his outstretched hand. He waited.

  Thirty seconds later he was still waiting.

  "Let's see," Indy calculated. "Given the law of falling bodies, that rock must have fallen... that would be 16.08 times 30 squared... around 14,400 feet, or nearly three miles by now. I'd call that bottomless, wouldn't you?"

  "We just didn't hear it," Granger said, and moved on.

  The natural bridge ended at a spectacular staircase hewn from the rocks, and the staircase led into the mountain for several hundred feet and then began to serpentine along the rim of a gorge. They could see all the way to the bottom of the gorge, because it was filled with molten lava.

  "I didn't think we were near any active volcanoes here," Joan said. The heat had plastered her hair against her face, and the weight of the egg was beginning to make her shoulder ache.

  "It is part of the intricate ecological system of the valley where we are going," Starbuck said. "The ground and the water there are warm, defying even the Gobi's harshest winters."

  "Sounds like a paradise," Joan said.

  "It is," Starbuck concurred. "I hope it stays that way."

  The staircase ended at a precipice. A heavy rope was tied around the base of a stalagmite, and the rope disappeared into darkness beyond the edge. The river of molten rock flowed far below.

  "Now for the hard part," Starbuck announced.

  "It's been easy so far?" Joan asked.

  "We must pull ourselves across on this rope."

  Starbuck handed the torch to Granger. Then, to demonstrate, he sat on the edge of the precipice, grasped the rope with both hands, and swung out. He swayed there for a moment, then began to swing his legs up, and finally grasped the rope with his ankles.


  "This is the best way to cross," he said. "Pull yourself along, hand over hand."

  "What do I do with the torch?" Granger asked.

  "Give it to me. I'll carry it in my teeth," Indy said.

  Joan was next. She looped the bag containing the egg around her neck, then confidently grasped the rope. She swung her legs up, and began to pull herself across.

  "My hands hurt," she complained halfway across.

  "Keep going, Sister," Indy said behind her.

  "They're bleeding."

  The blood on her palms made the rope dangerously slick, and Joan's pace slowed to a few inches each stroke. But when she tried to hurry up so the ordeal would be over with and the pain in her hands would end, she lost her grip on the rope entirely.

  She bobbed upside down by her ankles, the leather pouch hanging by her chin.

  "The egg!" Indy shouted. His words were muffled because of the torch in his mouth.

  "What do I do?" Joan mumbled.

  "Don't talk," Indy ordered. He looped an arm around the rope and took the torch out of his mouth. "Everybody, stop. Don't bounce the rope. Joan, can you reach the egg?"

  "No," she said. "The strap's too long."

  "Okay, listen carefully," Indy said. "I want you to very gently reach down and grasp the strap. Firmly. You got it?"

  "Yes," Joan said. "But the blood is rushing to my head and I'm getting really dizzy."

  "Slowly, raise the pouch."

  "Okay," she said.

  "Slowly!"

  "I am!"

  "Stop there," Indy said. "With your fingertips, try to tuck the egg back into the pouch. It's on the edge, so don't jostle it."

  "All right," Joan said.

  Her fingertips touched the leathery surface of the edge. Just as she nearly had the girth of the egg safely pushed back over the lip of the pouch, the rope jerked as several of its strands separated.

  The egg bounced out of the pouch. It fell for several seconds and then struck the lava river with a hiss.

  "Oh my God!" Joan said. "I'm sorry, I tried—"

  "It wasn't your fault," Indy said. "There's too many of us on this rope. We need to get to the other side, as quickly as we can."

  "But Indy," Joan protested. "I can't reach the rope with my arms. I don't have the strength. And Indy, I am really dizzy and I am really tired."

  "Hang on," Indy said.

  He moved quickly across to where she hung. Then, switching the torch again and looping his left arm around the rope once more, he extended his right arm toward her.

  She struggled against her own weight and reached up with her left hand. Their fingertips brushed, then Indy had her hand in his and hauled her up.

  The rope shook again as more strands separated.

  Joan started to cry.

  "Let's go," Indy said. "Don't worry about it. It was absolutely not your fault. We've got two whole eggs left."

  "Correction," Granger said as he dipped his fingers in the fluid dripping from his pouch. "We've got your whole egg left, but I'm afraid mine's been scrambled somehow. Actually, it doesn't smell half bad."

  "This is worse than the egg toss at the county fair," Indy said. "And Granger? If I don't get out of this thing, please do me a favor and don't deliver the eulogy at my memorial service. I don't want you sticking me with a fork."

  "Wouldn't dream of it, old boy. Brown eyes, you know."

  Once they all had reached the other side, Indy took out his sheath knife and hacked through the rest of the rope. He watched the frayed end as it fell into the darkness.

  "That will make it a little harder for Tzi," Indy said.

  "If he comes," Starbuck suggested.

  "No," Granger put in. "When he comes."

  "But what if we want to go back?" Joan asked.

  "We'll make ourselves a slingshot," Indy said.

  "Come," Starbuck said. "We are almost there."

  In another three hundred yards, the passage ended in a large cavern. They slid down a clay slope to the floor, then walked out of the mouth of the cavern into a sunlit valley.

  Indy blinked. The valley was filled with pine trees, broad leafy ferns, and a number of flowering plants that he could not identify. A girl of about eighteen or twenty, bare from the waist up and wearing a skirt made of antelope skin, came over to Indy and placed a garland of the unusual flowers around his neck. Then she laughed and ran away.

  "Welcome," Starbuck said, "to the Stone Age."

  "These are the Dune Dwellers," Starbuck explained as he laid the remaining dinosaur egg on a bed of ferns inside a little wooden shrine that had quickly been fashioned for it. "Or at least they are cousins of the Dune Dwellers whose jewelry you found outside the Flaming Cliffs. They revere the allergorhai-horhai, the triceratops, just as the Plains Indians worshiped the buffalo. It has been the center of their life for countless generations. Only, the dinosaurs are all gone now, except for our single egg."

  "But this valley," Indy said. "How has it survived untouched for so long? This isn't like the late Cretaceous. This is it."

  "Well, you saw what it took to get here," Starbuck said. "It is protected by the Flaming Cliffs, of course. And this area is so remote. These people have been cut off for several thousand years from the rest of the world. A stray traveler has obviously gotten through from time to time, judging from Mongolian folklore about the horhai, but that of course can be dismissed as myth. Actually, the introduction of an occasional stranger has helped these people survive by adding to the genetic stock. It is a common genetic stock and apparently hasn't upset things too badly."

  "How many are they?" Granger asked.

  "Forty-six," Starbuck said. "That includes about twenty-five adults. There are a dozen children, and the rest are old people. Both the children and the elderly are cared for by the community as a whole."

  "I wish I had a camera," Joan said. "This place is unbelievable. Can you imagine the sensation a story with photos would make?"

  "That is precisely why I am glad that you don't have a camera," Starbuck said. "There is nothing that would destroy these people more than being discovered. There would be an airstrip in this valley in a matter of weeks, and then what would we have?"

  "But wouldn't they be happier?" Granger asked. "Surely disease takes its toll on these people. Wouldn't the modern world be a blessing for them?"

  "No." Starbuck was emphatic. "It would be a curse. They have been isolated for so long that they are free of the diseases that most modern cultures spread. Smallpox, for example. You've all been vaccinated? Good. It spread through the Native American tribes like wildfire after the invasion of America."

  "Invasion?" Granger asked.

  "I have a deep conviction, Mr. Granger, that the American Indians would have fared much better had their continent not been discovered by the Europeans. Our Dune Dwellers here are the same. Look at them! Laughing and playing like children. They are well fed and free of most of the diseases that ravage humanity, and they live in a valley that is perpetually temperate. The lamastery has guarded this valley for hundreds of years, and they will set a broken bone when needed or assist with a difficult childbirth, but otherwise there is a strict prohibition against contact."

  "Incredible," Granger said. "I don't know whether to pity these people or to envy them."

  "Why the confusion?" Starbuck asked. "The People do not have to work for their survival. All they need is here. And they have never been introduced to the idea of sin."

  "It's the Garden of Eden," Joan said.

  "Pardon me, Professor," Granger said. "I appreciate your views, but what about your responsibility to science. Aren't you being selfish, keeping all this to yourself as your own paradise?"

  "I believe I can best serve that duty by remaining here," Starbuck said. "I have taken voluminous notes since I first arrived six months ago, and I intend to continue. Why, I have just scratched the surface of their language and their way of life. I don't even know what to call them. They call themselves the canobi, whi
ch simply means 'the People.' They have no word or concept for what a stranger is. They make no distinction between themselves and others. To them, we are all part of the tribe—we've just been away so long they can't remember us. That's why they have no fear."

  "Original innocence," Joan said.

  "What we are dealing with is the source of all cultures—all of us sprang from people like the Dune Dwellers, if not the Dune Dwellers themselves. In the geological scheme of things, modern man has just left this happy valley. Imagine what a boon to the world it would be if we could get a glimpse inside those Neolithic heads and find out what makes us tick. There is much to be done, Dr. Jones, and so very little time to do it."

  "What do you mean?" Indy asked.

  "Time is running out for this happy valley," Starbuck told him. "It is inevitable that the rest of the world will discover them. When that happens, the opportunity to study them in their natural environment will be over. Then this will no longer be the Stone Age—it will be just another backwater blemish on the face of the twentieth century."

  "Say," Granger interjected, examining the contents of his pouch. "What are we going to do about this ruined egg? Is there any way we can preserve it?"

  "I'm afraid not," Starbuck said. "They spoil rather quickly."

  "What a waste." Granger shook his head.

  "Perhaps not," Starbuck said. "The People consider the eggs a great delicacy, and I have had a devil of a time keeping them from making Neolithic omelettes out of our three. They also think there is something mystical about the consumption of the dinosaur eggs which confers vitality upon them and ensures survival for the species. Since there's nothing we can do to save this egg, let's cook it up and put their superstition to the test."

  "Bravo," Granger said.

  Starbuck patted the egg, covered it with a frond, and rose.

  "My hope is to buy the People a little more time. In a few more years—in a few more decades, if we're lucky—it will be all over. But until that happens, I will remain here, living and studying these people, and that baby triceratops that's about to hatch. Then, when the world comes bursting in, clamoring for the story—the story will be ready to be told."