by Greg Bear
Anthony and Ray saw Shellabarger simultaneously. Anthony pointed him out for Peter. The trainer lay on top of a broad, low pile of rocks southwest of the trees, about fifty yards from them. He had assumed a sharpshooter's position with his rifle pointing at the animals.
"What in hell is he doing?" Ray asked. Billie reached them and dropped to his knees. "They are trying to kill each other!" he gasped. "Two Challengers—very bad!"
"What happened?" Anthony asked.
The animals paid as much attention to the humans as two sparring bulls might have to toy poodles.
"Shellabarger, he went to the venator's nest," Billie said. "He does not tell me why. The female is not there, but the eggs are buried—under straw and shit!"
"To keep them warm," Ray said.
"He wants to take an egg. He says the venator will be dead soon, with no mate, but the eggs can be saved."
"By whom?" Wetherford asked, dumfounded. "Who wants one?"
"Then we hear the female coming back, and behind her, from behind the trees, he has been hiding, we see Dinoshi!"
Anthony started forward, but Ray and Wetherford grabbed his arms.
"Hold on," Wetherford said. "We need a plan."
"I'm going to help Vince!"
"Help him do what?" Wetherford asked.
"Get away."
Wetherford narrowed his eyes and lifted his mouth into a dubious half sneer. "He's where he wants to be, for some reason. He could have followed Billie if he wanted to."
"He's trying to help the venator," Peter said.
Wetherford's scowl deepened as he swiveled to face Peter. "Why, for Christ's sake?"
Peter knew, but clear expression in words did not seem possible. "Because of Dagger," he said. "Because we screwed up getting Dagger here . . . to his home."
Wetherford seemed ready to spit. "Vince Shellabarger, the grand old man of dinosaur exploitation, who's pulled more
bloody beasts off this plateau than anybody, you mean Shellabarger takes all this show-business-return-the-dinosaurs, save-the-plateau crap seriously?"
"I'd say he does," Ray said.
Wetherford laughed. "He's trying to shoot a death eagle!" he hooted in disbelief.
"Distracting it, is my guess," Anthony said. "And I'd keep my voice down, if I were you, just in case the animals decide it's a draw and break for a snack."
Anthony grabbed Peter by the shoulder. "Whatever Vince wants to do, he's crazy not to leave now and come with us. We may have to pull him out of there—or help him."
Wetherford stamped his foot. "Bloody hell!"
Peter saw someone walking toward them from the corner of his eye and turned. Merian Cooper carted a camera on a wooden tripod up to where they stood, planted it, put his eye to the viewfinder, and said, "Ray, you know this place better than me. Tell me when I should pack up and get the hell out of here." The camera began to whir.
Ray steadied the tripod.
"We all should get the hell out of here," Wetherford said. Peter agreed but saw his father's point. If the trainer wanted to die here, that was his concern—but if he wanted to do something as crazy as save a venator's egg, save a desperate species from extinction—even something as dangerous, as terrifying, as ancient and gory-breathed as Altovenator ferox—that was different.
Peter felt dizzied by this reversal of emotion, a sudden irrational resolve. He was not like his father, but—
This was something that had to be done.
"Is that the venator's nest?" Anthony asked Billie.
"Where Shellabarger is? Yes. It is filled with straw and shit and bones."
Anthony disregarded that. "Did you go in there with him?"
"Not all the way," Billie said.
"Are there eggs in there?"
"I did not see."
"Young?"
"I did not see."
The beasts lunged at each other. The venator female took the death eagle by its right forelimb and jerked her head sideways, ripping the limb off at the shoulder. Peter expected the death eagle to lift its head and scream with rage and pain, as it might have done in a movie, but it silently sank its beak into the venator's shoulder and shook furiously, slicing loose a chunk of flesh and bone the size of a human torso. It did not swallow this, but tossed it high in the air. The piece of venator shoulder landed barely ten feet from them. This was finally enough for Wetherford. He turned and passed OBie as he came up from the beach.
"There's a rain squall moving in," OBie called. He carried a heavy hunting rifle—an elephant gun, by its looks. "Pilot wants us in the plane now!"
Cooper grunted and kept on filming. OBie grimly sized up the situation. "Boys, we're all going to end up guano if we don't leave now."
"Here's the plan," Anthony said.
Peter and Ray hunched over like football players to listen.
"Run to the nest. Ray and I grab Vince and haul him out of there. Peter, you find an egg—two if they' re not too large— and don't take more than a few seconds in the nest!"
OBie lifted the rifle. "I'll try to cover you."
"Peter," Anthony said as they prepared to make the dash to the nest. "You are my son and I am proud of you and I love you with all my heart."
"Dad, we're crazy as loons. I love you, too."
"My lad!" Anthony said. He lifted his finger to his lips and smiled. "Don't tell your mom."
Anthony jumped through a brake of ferns and Ray and Peter followed. Despite his father's weakness of an hour before, they had a hard time keeping up with him. He dashed back and forth as if dodging bullets.
He S back on Sicily, Peter realized. The lumbering shapes to the east seemed right on top of them, but they were still thirty or forty yards away.
They jumped over humps of grass and bush and ferns, skirted low tree saplings bent by the wind, and ran up the mound onto the edge of the pile of rocks and sticks. The trainer lay beside a green and brown mound of debris that smelled fearsomely bad.
Shellabarger rolled over on his back and glared at them. His right pants leg showed a fresh bloody stain just above the knee.
"I've broken my leg in these rocks," he said. "Bone's punched through."
"Lift him," Anthony said. He and Ray stepped over the boulders carefully and bent to grab the trainer's arms.
"Peter, there are eggs in the middle of the shit," Shellabarger said. "Under the leaves and sticks and—"
"He knows," Ray grunted.
They brought Shellabarger up sharply. His broken leg dangled and he gritted his teeth, stifling a scream. Peter picked his way over the clumps of dried whitened feces and bones—a femur half as tall as he was, a rack of two-inch-thick ribs still coated with hide and bumpy diamond-shaped armor plates—and dug his hands deep into the gray-crusted mound in the center. The black and slippery dung beneath had been piled at least three feet high.
He reached in up to his elbow, feeling the steaming warmth of fermentation. His stomach began to do flips. His fingers caught something sharp and he grimaced, pushed sideways. They jammed against something hard. He fumbled around the shape quickly— rounded, about ten inches long. Nose held high, he dug furiously and pulled a brown ovoid out of the hot muck. In the hole, he saw another, somewhat smaller egg, and reached for that as well.
"PETER!" Anthony shouted.
He pulled out the second egg, looked up, and his foot skidded. Peter fell up to his shoulders in the mess. Shit spattered one side of his face and got into his mouth, but that did not concern him.
The venator had seen her nest being disturbed. The death eagle had moved a dozen yards away from her to reassess the battle, and she took the opportunity to aim directly for the nest— and for Peter. She lowered her head and ran over the rocks and scrub with a weakened, hobbling gait—at less than the speed of a well-bred horse trotting. Her shoulder was a broad patch of red; she was bleeding to death, but she would not allow herself to die before defending her nest.
The venator seemed taller than any tree, bigger than a PBY, a
ll teeth and dripping blood and black, looming shadow. Peter froze. Rain hit his face like small wet hammers.
He stood up with painful slowness and saw that he had pulled both of the brown spotted eggs up to his chest. He clutched them in his arms. Together they weighed about thirty pounds. They steamed in the cold rain.
Irrationally, he thought, They will die if we don't keep them warm.
Eggs held firmly, he jumped from rock to rock and down the side of the nest. The air seemed to sizzle with rain and a trilling roar vibrated his chest.
He saw Cooper with the camera, OBie and Billie standing behind, then he glanced to the left and saw his father and Ray carrying Shellabarger. Peter streaked over the ground, faster than he had ever run in his life, and was within twenty feet of the three when a branch tripped him and he sprawled.
His forehead whacked the dirt hard and he almost blacked out. The eggs flew and landed in a thick stand of grass. The world spun; he caught a blurred glimpse of Shellabarger tossing Ray and Anthony like a circus strongman throwing off shill wrestlers. The trainer bounced on one leg and raised his hands to the sky—
A three-toed foot trampled a bush and dug into the dirt not five feet from where Peter lay. The air smelled of stale parrot and butcher shop.
Peter rolled. The female venator's snout and rows of long yellow teeth plunged through the sheets of rain like a speeding truck and her jaws opened to show a horny black tongue and a throat like a purple tunnel.
A rifle butt cracked her in the side of the head and broke in two. Shellabarger stood over Peter on one leg; how he had come this far, Peter did not know. The venator jerked to one side and diverted her downward swoop just enough to wrap her teeth around the trainer's arm and ribs. She lifted him like a highspeed elevator. Shellabarger grabbed her head with his arms and she bit down with the fresh wood snap of splintering bones.
Peter saw Shellabarger's face as he was lifted, saw the trainer's eyes fixed on his own, his lips set tight and turned down at the sides, and then Vince Shellabarger's jaw hung loose as if he were already dead but passing on a final message—something words would never convey.
Peter pushed himself up, grabbed one egg and then the other in the stumbling start of his dash, and sensed rather than saw the venator toss the trainer's lifeless body in the air.
She drew back to grab for Peter. A white-rimmed darkness rose behind her and filled with two gleaming green eyes and a bloody beak—
And the death eagle dropped on her like a truckload of knives. Its wide white-gorgeted griffin's head thrust again and again, beak stripping skin into ribbons, shredding tendons, and exposing pale fat and pink muscle and snow-white bone. The venator's other arm spasmed and drooped.
Peter saw these things as if in a dream, many views at once— the ground beneath him, the animals to one side, his father and Ray up ahead, on their knees, with Cooper still behind the camera and OBie firing the rifle furiously, crack-crack-crack.
The venator was weakening. Truly the time of her kind had come; Dinoshi could outlast even the largest and swiftest carnosaur. The death eagle drew back, neck arched, lower jaw withdrawn into the wattles above its breast, and rose to its full height. It lifted the spread yellow talons of one foot and raked the back of the venator's leg, hamstringing her. She gave an agonized squeal and toppled to her side with a thump that nearly knocked Peter off his feet.
The eggs felt like a ton of rocks as he reached his father and Ray. Peter twisted around and stood beside Merian Cooper's whirring camera. Rain drummed on them all and formed a thick scrim over the gray silhouette of the death eagle, talons swiping again and again at the prostrate venator as if carving a turkey, cutting away ribs and thigh, ripping open her abdomen and spilling intestines in twisted sausage jumbles. The female gaped up at her murderer, alive but unable to move or fight.
Peter could not look. Cooper gave a whoop and continued to shoot film. Ray snatched one leg of the tripod. "Time to go!" he shouted.
Anthony grabbed Peter's shoulder and they ran through the rain for the lake.
Chapter Seventeen
Peter clutched the eggs so tightly he feared they would break. They all ran like silent-movie comedians: legs pumping high, hair soaked into skullcaps, rain splashing from their faces and water streaming from elbows, noses, and chins.
He saw the yellow raft through the downpour. Anchored in the lake beyond, the PBY floated like some serene giant seabird. The wind had come up and whitecaps laced the beach with froth. The two men in fatigues stood by the raft, soaked and miserable, but when they saw the runners they waved their arms wildly.
And then they crouched, jaws dropping, staring over the heads of the fleeing men. Anthony darted a look backward and suddenly shoved Peter to one side. A great toothed beak and gleaming green eye swept past with hardly a sound but for a thunderclap snap. Peter rolled and came to rest face up, still clutching the eggs. The brush of Dinoshfs gorget had left a vivid scrape on his cheek and temple.
The death eagle reared over them, blood streaming from its breast and head, rain washing bloody rivulets down its feathers.
It straightened and lifted its beak to the sky, skreeing triumphantly despite its pain, totally assured of dominance and power.
Ray threw the camera into the raft and grabbed a thick straight tree limb from the shore. Anthony, on the other side of the death eagle, did likewise. OBie limped along, winded, barely able to make the last few steps. Cooper grabbed him and dragged him by his shoulders over the pebbles and sand.
From out of nowhere, Billie appeared with a machete. He darted in behind the huge avisaur and slapped its leg with the flat of the blade, ducking immediately. One foot kicked back, its talons missing Billie's head by inches, and the beast turned, spraying dirt. The black tail feathers brushed Anthony's hair.
Ray poked the death eagle from one side with his branch and Anthony poked it from the other.
The avisaur did not know which audacious little creature to strike first. It took a step forward, toward Billie; the Indian was back on his feet and his face betrayed no fear. The death eagle leveled, and Ray and Anthony poked it again simultaneously.
Peter stood up less than two yards from Dinoshfs stamping, plunging feet.
The avisaur thrust first at Ray, who whacked it sharply on the side of its beak with his stick. It reared back, growling with indignation, and turned on Anthony. Billie chose this moment to expertly throw a rock into its openjaws. The animal hesitated, raised and flexed its neck, gulped the rock down, and faced Peter's father.
Billie threw another rock and hit it squarely in its left eye.
The death eagle seemed to explode. From Peter's perspective, it became all talons and massive pumping legs and swinging tail. The tail caught Ray across his chest and sent him sprawling.
Anthony threw his branch at the beast, but it was paying none of them any attention for the moment.
"Go!" Anthony shouted to Peter. The raft had been pushed into shallow water. Cooper and OBie waved to him and he ran to the raft and gave the eggs to OBie. One of the men in fatigues tried to grab Peter, but he jumped clear and splashed back to the sand and pebbles. He would not leave without his father and friends.
Anthony could not get around the thrashing, half blind, and wholly enraged death eagle. Peter ran to Ray, who lay in the grass, the breath knocked out of him, barely able to lift his head. Peter grabbed Ray's arm and tugged him up and over on his hands and knees. Ray rose up, suddenly whooped as he inhaled a lungful of air, then groaned and fell back on all fours.
The death eagle seemed to have recovered from Billie's rock, but Billie flung several more in rapid succession, striking it on its breast, the side of its head just forward of the flared gorget, and again on its beak.
Without a sound, the beast swooped. Billie had no time to think; it seemed impossible for any animal so large to move so fast. And Anthony appeared beside Billie just as quickly, holding up a short, stout stick.
The avisaur jammed its right
eye directly on the stick. Its open jaw flattened both of them, but snapped shut only as the animal reared yet again.
Ray had recovered enough to stand. He and Peter dodged crabwise around the trampled grass and spraying sand and rocks, toward Billie and Anthony. Billie lay on his side, eyes glazed, blood dribbling from his nose and mouth. Anthony was already on his feet. Together, they lifted Billie like a limp doll and ran for the beach.
The death eagle, now almost blind, fluffed its dish of neck feathers forward and turned its head, listening for their footsteps. It put one foot down, talons flexing, and then another.
They waded to the raft. Billie mumbled something, spit a little blood, and grabbed a rope to haul himself onto the rubber gunwale. Anthony and Ray pushed him in the rest of the way.
The death eagle stood in the lake shallows, making deep drum thumps topped by querying hums like strokes on a cello. It was uncomfortable with the feeling of water on its legs, but its anger, its pain, its pure dominant hatred, drove it to follow the humans. It splashed to within fifteen feet of the raft and cocked its crown toward the sound of oars. It hummed again, its eyes swollen shut, pointing its beak first at Anthony, then at Peter and Ray as they pushed the raft into deeper water.
Anthony picked Peter up bodily and threw him into the raft, then vaulted himself up on stiff arms, lifting one leg to swing it over the gunwale. Wetherford grabbed his shoulder to help.
The death eagle spread its tail, tensed its neck, and lunged.
The beak closed on Anthony's right leg just below the knee. With a sound like huge scissors snicking shut, it removed the lower leg and foot as neatly as a surgeon. Anthony dropped heavily into the boat bottom and blood spurted from the stump. The leg and foot fell into the lake and sank. Wetherford cried out and shielded his face; OBie took aim with the rifle and shot at the beast's head. Stung by the bullet, it pulled back.
Peter grabbed his father's shoulders and held him close. Ray unhitched his belt and pushed it through the loops on his pants.
The death eagle stepped into a hole in the lake bottom and skidded, then lost its balance completely. With a hiss, it toppled into Lake Akuena. The wash from its fall almost swamped the raft, but also pushed them farther from shore.