Reaching the edge of the forest, they found a well-worn trail, the chicks tightening up the formation, still protective of Jeanette but more tolerant of the creatures following close behind.
Elizabeth studied the creatures. They were humanlike in many ways, walking on two legs and with two arms. They wore loincloths over leggings, and most wore bundles strapped to their backs with leather straps that crisscrossed their chests. Their three-fingered hands were dexterous, and they manipulated even small items with ease. Their feet looked awkward, with three large toes like the velociraptors, and very little heel or ball. Wrapped in leather strips, the creatures protected their feet as humans did, suggesting their feet were sensitive. Their shoulders were narrower than a human’s, their chests strangely bowed, as if overinflated. Strangest of all were their eyes. Large, and set in a face that sloped so that the nose and jaw seemed to merge into one snout, the eyes were green with vertical slits. The body was hairless, not even eyebrows, the eyes protected by a bone ridge.
Their tools and weapons were Stone Age but made of an odd material. Spearheads were shiny and black, resembling plastic. If it was flint, it was smoother than any handmade spear tip she had ever seen. Their knives were made of the same black substance and carried in leather sheaths. The creatures’ water bags were the stomachs of an animal, leather stoppers used as corks. They wore no necklaces, bracelets, or anything that looked like a totem. Their bodies were unmarked, lacking tattoos or paint.
“They’re male,” Jeanette said, nudging Elizabeth.
One creature had stepped to the side, lifted his loincloth, and was urinating. The appendage was male enough, although the penis was longer and slimmer. Elizabeth could not see any testicles.
“Watch your ass,” Jeanette said.
Wiping the sweat from her forehead, Elizabeth spotted a glowing object in the sky. As she stared at it, a creature stepped nearer, pointing at the bright dot with the middle finger of the three on its right hand, and said something more song than sentence.
“I don’t understand,” Elizabeth said.
When it stepped closer, Sally growled, and the creature jumped back, startled. Two velociraptors trotted to Sally’s side, heads low, hissing at the creature. Its taut gray face registered fear, and the creature backed away, eyes on the animals.
“Good chicks,” Elizabeth said. “Good dog.”
As they walked, the trail became wider and well trodden, smaller paths connecting to it like tributaries feeding a river. It was well maintained, with ferns, succulents, trees, and limbs hacked back from the path, so that nothing brushed Elizabeth’s arms or legs. More of the creatures appeared, coming out of hiding places, holding spears or wooden swords, staring at the human women and the orbiting velociraptors. The odds were rapidly changing.
“I don’t like this,” Jeanette said. “Now I’ll have to reload twice before I can kill them all.”
“They’re just curious,” Elizabeth said. “I’d stare at us if I was them too.”
“The chicks are getting nervous,” Jeanette said.
One of the velociraptors snapped, just missing the leg of a creature that drifted too near. Other chicks hissed, the creatures giving the women and their velociraptors more room. The chicks calmed down but stayed wary. Panting hard, and limping noticeably, Sally kept pace, wasting no energy on barking.
They came out of the forest to the narrow end of a V-shaped valley. Nestled up against a steep rocky hillside was a village. Huge sharpened poles surrounded the village. Looking like overgrown pick-up sticks, the poles were buried in the earth at one end, the sharpened ends pointing outward. There was plenty of space for people and small animals to pass between the poles. Seeing the size and number of poles, Elizabeth easily imagined the animals the villagers defended against.
Passing between poles, they entered the village and were immediately surrounded by creatures, male and female (four nipples but no external mammary glands), young and old. Sooty and smelling of cooking fires, the women pushed in front of the men, staring and pointing at the velociraptors, shooing children away, snatching up toddlers and taking them into huts. The toddlers were potbellied to the point of making Elizabeth wonder how they could stand without falling over. With deeply curved backs, the toddlers held their shoulders back, counterbalancing the protruding stomachs. The men were lean, the women plumper, but not fat. Like the men, the women wore loincloths and leggings. Also like the men, the women were hairless.
Huts were made of woven mats over wooden frames. Cooking fires sprinkled the village, with fewer fires than huts, suggesting shared fires and collective cooking. Strips of meat hung over a smoky fire, the strips impaled on miniature versions of the giant poles surrounding the village. A clay pot sealed with a leather cap sat in front of a hut, and bags made of leather, or intestines, hung from a pole mounted near the roofline of the hut. A Monoclonius stood between huts, wearing a harness, a huge travois stretched out behind. Seven feet tall at the shoulder, the armored quadruped had a bony neck collar, one long snout horn, and smaller horns over each eye. Instead of a mouth, the Monoclonius had a beak, now munching a mouth full of green stalks.
“Look,” Jeanette said, pointing between two huts.
There a triceratops sat, rigged with a harness and saddle.
“Domesticated?” Elizabeth said, amazed.
“I don’t see Carson or anyone,” Jeanette said. “This is a waste of time.”
Jeanette let her rifle fall from her shoulder and whispered something to the chicks, pulling them in closer, heads dropping low, hissing. Terrified alien women pulled back, men stepping forward, spears pointed at the chicks.
“Let me talk to them,” Elizabeth said.
“Might as well,” Jeanette said. “There’s no way we can shoot our way out of here.
“Calm the velociraptors down,” Elizabeth said.
“No,” Jeanette said. “Talk fast.”
The huts were rectangular, most the size of a two-car garage, but they walked straight through the village, past another feeding Monoclonius, to the largest structure, a long house, two stories tall, made of the same woven mats and wooden poles. Two carved tree stumps marked the entrance, more mats hanging between them, hiding the opening. These mats were green, not like the brown of the dried mats on other buildings. The carvings in the stumps were fresh, showing leaves and trees, but odd, stylized trees with puffy tops and impossibly thin trunks.
The group stopped, the crowd whispering and pointing at the velociraptors, Sally, and the human women, but mostly at the velociraptors.
“We mean you no harm,” Elizabeth said slowly, exaggerating each syllable.
The creatures stared, interested, strange cat eyes unblinking.
“We’re looking for our friends,” Elizabeth said.
More unblinking stares.
“Try saying it louder,” Jeanette said.
“I know it’s stupid, but we have to try something,” Elizabeth said.
Then one of the creatures leaned forward, looking at Elizabeth’s pack. Sally growled a warning, and two raptor chicks lunged and snapped. Elizabeth twisted, trying to see what the creature was looking at.
“The patch? Are you looking at the patch?” Elizabeth said.
Carefully, the creature reached out, pointing a long, clawed finger, touching the patch.
“Easy, Sally,” Elizabeth said. “Easy, chicks.”
Elizabeth took off her pack, then tore the patch free from the pack, handing it to the creature, which took it gingerly, eyes on Sally and the chicks. Patch in hand, the creature retreated to the others, all of them examining the image of the T. rex and the cowboy lassoing it.
“What the hell do they want with our logo?” Jeanette asked.
More creatures appeared, coming through the mats hiding the entrance to the building they were standing in front of. Staring at the velociraptors, the newly arrived creatures ignored Elizabeth as she continued to talk at them. Abruptly, they spoke to one another, animated, thei
r combined voices sounding like a dysfunctional choir. Soon the patch was the center of attention, then the velociraptor chicks, then Sally, and then the creatures pointed at Jeanette and Elizabeth. The discussion was vehement, individual creatures leaning forward to get the floor, then leaning back when their argument was finished. After a long, discordant discussion, one of the aliens stood tall, the others lowering their heads, backing away. Turning to Elizabeth, Jeanette, Sally, and the velociraptors, the creature spoke for a minute, its speech a song to human ears, and then it stopped and stepped back and sideways, bending, and motioning them inside.
“Why the hell should we?” Jeanette asked. “If the boys are in there, he can just bring them out.”
“They don’t understand,” Elizabeth said.
“They’ll understand a bullet,” Jeanette said.
“Jeanette, they aren’t threatening us. They are inviting us into their home.”
“That’s not a home,” Jeanette said. “It’s the biggest building in the village. For all you know, it’s a prison.”
“Or a palace, or a temple,” Elizabeth said. “The only way to know is to step through that door.”
“The chicks go with me, or I don’t go in,” Jeanette said.
“Absolutely,” Elizabeth said. “I love the chicks.”
Elizabeth and Sally went first, Jeanette and the velociraptors right behind. It took seconds for their eyes to adapt to an interior that was one big room with a dirt floor. Built against the side of the hill, the far side of the room was the wide mouth of a cave. Ten feet high and thirty feet wide, the cave entrance was an irregular oval. A few woven mats lay in front of the opening. Looking into the cave, Elizabeth expected blackness, but instead she saw weird vegetation and the dandelion trees like those carved on the posts outside the hut. The hill was backlit by a soft glow, like the rising sun.
“It’s like looking through a window,” Jeanette said.
“It’s an opening,” Elizabeth said. “Like the one that brought us here.”
“But where the hell is that?” Jeanette asked. “I’ve never seen trees like those.”
Then Do trotted forward and into the cave scene.
“No!” Jeanette shouted, quickly drowned out by the musical shrieking of the creatures.
28
Rescue Team
According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, our lives pass more slowly if we travel close to the speed of light. He has also shown that we live longer if we go and live in an intense gravitational field. Einstein has thus opened up the future and shown that it is possible to slow down time.
—John Baruch
Present Day
Lake County, Florida
John Roberts waited impatiently in the lobby of the University of Florida, Physics Extension. After showing his badge to a receptionist, an office manager, a faculty member, a division chair, and a unit supervisor, John was asked to wait. John was just about done waiting. Nick Paulson had disappeared; Elizabeth Hawthorne, was gone, as well as others; Visitors were appearing and disappearing; and the damn earth was shaking. The world did not have time for John to be standing in a waiting room.
“This way, Mr. Roberts,” a young woman said.
Dressed in a lab coat, the short-haired blonde had a noticeable Southern drawl. Her name tag identified her as Dr. Webb, but she looked like a teenager. Controlling his temper, John followed her to an elevator, where she used a key to take them down three floors. When the door opened, she motioned him forward but remained in the elevator. Stepping out, John found his hand feeling along his belt for the sidearm that wasn’t there. Dr. Webb smiled as the doors closed, leaving John alone.
White material lined the hallway, floor, ceiling, and walls. Shiny and smooth, it looked like plastic but felt like rock. Canister lights, recessed into the ceiling, lit the corridor intermittently. A door at the far end was open. More curious than angry now, John walked the length of the corridor, passing four side doors made of the same white material. None of the doors had handles or visible locks. The door at the end opened into a domed room, where even the bins lining the wall lacked sharp angles or edges. Everything looked like it was molded out of plastic. Workstations filled the center of the room, each piece of equipment connected to a computer. Hanging from the ceiling near one section of the curving wall was a large monitor. Under the monitor, sitting on a white desk, was Emmett Puglisi.
Friends since Nick Paulson sent them on a mission through time and space, John and Rosa had helped Emmett stop a Mayan priest from cutting Emmett’s wife’s heart out. A white scar still marked Carrollee Chen-Slater-Puglisi’s chest where the priest had made an incision.
“Shouldn’t you be in Hawaii?” John asked, not as surprised at seeing Emmett as he should be.
“Carrollee and her mother are watching the kids,” Emmett said. “I’m on temporary loan to the OSS.”
There was some gray in Emmett’s brown beard and on his temples, his scalp well into male-pattern baldness. He was middle-aged pudgy, average in height, with brown eyes and a kind-looking face, almost cherubic. With a little less hair, he would look right at home in monk’s robes.
“Carrollee let you work for Nick again?” John asked.
“I’m on a short leash,” Emmett said. “I have to call home three times a day. How’s Rosa?” Emmett asked.
“Unaware of what I’m doing,” John said. “She and the kids are happier this way.”
“Is she still flying the Aurora?”
The Aurora was the secret spaceplane that Rosa had once copiloted from Earth to Freedom Station in orbit.
“Commercial,” John said. “None of that Area Fifty-one technology. How did Nick lure you back?”
“With this,” Emmett said, tapping a key on the keyboard next to him.
The moon tyrannosaur appeared, writhing in its endless struggle.
“I’ve seen the video,” John said.
“This is live,” Emmett said. “The astronauts set up a camera before they left, and it’s still operating. We have hundreds of hours of that juvenile tyrannosaur fighting to get free from whatever is holding it. Nick thinks that might be the tyrannosaur that followed you and Robert Ripman out of the Yucatán past. There were two, but you killed one on the moon. This one was still in the passages when the nuclear bomb destroyed the pyramid and the time passages connecting the pyramids.”
“How could it live so long?” John asked, amazed at the resolution of the image broadcast from the moon.
“How can it live in a vacuum at all?” Emmett asked. “It couldn’t. It isn’t in space–time as we know it.”
“Quasi-time,” John said.
“You could call it that. It really isn’t time as we understand it at all. The space–time that we exist in is unidirectional. The arrow of time is a constant, and we move from the present to the future—never to the past. This tyrannosaur exists in space–time that lacks the arrow of time.”
“Could a nuclear explosion rip away that time arrow thing?” John asked.
“Not by itself,” Emmett said. “But through an interaction with orgonic energy, black ripples, and other forces that we’ve released? Who knows?”
“Isn’t this outside your field?” John asked, remembering Emmett as an astrophysicist and instrumental in extending Kenny Randall’s model predicting the Time Quilt into space to include the moon effect.
“This isn’t anyone’s field,” Emmett said. “I’ve been working on form–energy interactions since we made it out of that pyramid. Mostly math modeling—that’s all Carrollee will let me do. The engineers that built this isolation lab used the results of that research.”
“Isolation lab?” John probed.
“We’re still interested in orgonic energy,” Emmett said. “But it’s strictly defensive research and purely theoretical. No one here is trying to manipulate time and space, so there’s nothing here that accounts for what happened to Nick.”
“Emmett, this lab is ground zero for what
ever the hell is going on,” John said. “You are just miles from a ranch where Visitor velociraptors showed up. Orlando had a Visitor tyrannosaur loose in the streets, not to mention that herd it was hunting.”
“Brachylophosaurs,” Emmett said.
“Whatever,” John said impatiently. “And what about the earthquakes? In Florida?”
“Earth tremors,” Emmett corrected. “And they’re not just in Florida. Mostly, though.”
“Emmett, it isn’t just Nick that’s disappeared, it’s Elizabeth too.”
“Elizabeth Hawthorne?” Emmett asked, hearing it for the first time.
“She went after Nick and disappeared through the same passage in the same way. But when I tried to get through, I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried.”
“Nick and Elizabeth, but not you?” Emmett said. “That kills one of my theories. I hypothesized that any of the survivors of the destruction of the orgonic-collecting pyramids might carry a residue allowing them to pass through a space–time barrier.”
“There’s another problem with your theory,” John said. “Elizabeth went through the passage with another woman who had nothing to do with our jaunt through the time tunnels.”
“That’s disappointing,” Emmett said.
“Maybe not,” John said. “When they went through the passage, they had velociraptors with them.”
“What? You’re kidding.”
“Little ones. A flock of them. Those velociraptors had to be Visitors. Maybe whatever let them pass through that tunnel rubbed off onto Elizabeth.”
“That or there’s something about the velociraptors that modifies the time–space around them.”
“There’s something else,” John said. “When I tried crawling into the passage where Nick disappeared, something weird happened. It felt like I was in the passage for seconds, but when I got out, it had been minutes.”
Dinosaur Thunder Page 19
