Structophis

by Joseph Lallo

  “Oh, sure. You’ve got to keep an eye on the employees. Wouldn’t want them raiding the till.”

  “It isn’t quite so simple as that, but the sentiment is broadly similar.”

  “So what do you call this thing?” Dimitrios asked, scraping at the framed wooden piece with his fingernail.

  Hearst looked up. “That is a piece of intarsia made from Enlightenment-era church pews.”

  “Intarsia. Sounds contagious,” he said, wiping his hand on his shirt.

  He continued to pace, eventually coming to a darkened doorway. When he stepped through, the lights automatically clicked on to reveal what looked like something from a natural history museum exhibit. At least seventy different animals stood in breathtakingly natural positions, most prepared with a level of taxidermic skill that made one nervous they might move at any minute.

  “Whoa…” Dimitrios said. “You’ve got a thing for dead animals, don’t you?”

  “I find the myriad forms nature has attained to be truly worthy of our admiration. They serve as inspiration. Seldom can science expect to do any better than replicate what nature has achieved on its own.”

  Dimitrios scratched his head and walked past a carefully arranged diorama of bears and elk.

  “And you need them to be stuffed and standing in your den to do that?”

  “One never knows when inspiration may strike. It is best to perpetually surround oneself with things to nurture the mind at all times.”

  He stopped in front of what might have been a chicken with a pituitary disorder and the wrong sort of head.

  “I’ve seen this one before. What do you call it?”

  Hearst wearily turned. “Ah, so this is where it is kept. That, Dimitrios, is the only known complete stuffed dodo. The last of them was thought to have been destroyed some years ago, and museums have been making do with specimens assembled from several different animals. I was able to locate a collector who had a previously unknown one and convince him to part with it. I’d forgotten which of our properties housed it.”

  “Sounds like the sort of thing you should really donate to a museum then, if they don’t have one. Let all the kiddies see it. You could probably make some money on attendance fees, or at least get a fat write-off. Plus the little bronze plaque with your name on it.”

  “Though I value the work museums do, I personally feel that the great minds of the world can do more good when properly immersed in their chosen inspirations than the general public will if given the chance to blindly wander by the wonders of nature. The mere chance that having a dodo in my home might spark a notion that, in five years, could produce a revolutionary new jet engine to speed travel and decrease fuel consumption is reason enough to keep it to myself, wouldn’t you say?”

  Dimitrios shrugged. “You’re the guy with the money. If you’re willing to pay, no reason you shouldn’t get whatever you want.”

  “Precisely my sentiment.”

  He continued looking over the room. As larger and more exotic creatures in the skillful poses that made them look so vibrant and alive filled his view, a thought fluttered up to the top of his mind.

  “Say… What exactly are you planning to do with the pizza dragon once you get it?”

  “That is none of your concern, Dimitrios.”

  “I’d still like to know. It’s technically my property still.”

  “No, Dimitrios, it is not. Legally it was never your property, and the contract that it now seems you did not devote the proper amount of diligence to explicitly relinquished any custody rights to my organization. Again, your lack of attention to detail, even when dealing with binding documents, may offer some explanation for your limited success in the business world.”

  “I’ve done very well for myself. I’d still like to know. You can’t simply leave me out of that particular decision.”

  “I invoke Article Seven, Paragraph Three of the agreement. If I paraphrase slightly, ‘I am the guy with the money, I can do whatever I want.’ As you have observed, this is broadly true in life, and specifically true in this exchange.”

  “But we’re partners!”

  “I would not characterize our association as a partnership.”

  “You just paid me fifteen million dollars. That makes us partners.”

  “No, Dimitrios, that makes you an exceptionally overpaid employee.”

  Dimitrios felt a spark of irritation at the tone of the statement. Alas, his mind had but a single track, and he held to his bitter feelings only as long as the next interesting event, which followed barely a minute later. In this case it was the familiar voice of Hearst’s secretary.

  “Mr. Hearst, Ms. Grumman is approaching your door.”

  The voice came from his phone on the end table beside him, issuing forth despite the lack of any ring or other notification. He tapped the screen. “Yes… yes, of course, send her in,” Hearst said.

  “Right away, sir.”

  He tapped the screen to end the “call.” Dimitrios checked his watch.

  “Doesn’t that girl ever get to the end of her shift?” he asked.

  “I employ a pair of twins, headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand, and Seville, Spain. They operate on opposing twelve-hour shifts. I find the consistency of communication helps streamline my thought processes.”

  “… That’s rich-man thinking right there. You’re a real visionary.”

  “I like to think so. In a moment you will be meeting an associate of mine. Her name is Ruth Grumman and she is one of my more… motivated employees. I allow her to operate with a fair amount of autonomy, as she is often tasked with performing certain necessary evils that might prove difficult for our public relations department to smooth out should they be linked to me directly.”

  “So she does the dirty work, huh? Strike busting? Rough negotiations? Hostile takeovers?”

  “Something like that. From this point forward you will be working directly with her. I have placed her in charge of the acquisition of the Structophis gastrignae—”

  “Gesundheit.”

  “—and she may have some additional questions for you. I would appreciate it if you were forthcoming. That will help things go smoothly.”

  “Fine, fine. My life is an open book.”

  “Splendid.”

  The door to the den clicked open and a woman stepped inside. She certainly made a formidable first impression. Her jawline was sharp and strong, her hair a ruthlessly precise crew cut. Similar precision had been applied to the cut of her business suit, the lines of her makeup, and the rigidness of her posture. Overall she gave the impression of someone for whom calipers were a part of her morning grooming.

  “Herr Hearst,” she said, clicking her heels together in a decidedly military way at the salutation.

  “Ms. Grumman. This is Mr. Spiros.”

  “Dimitrios, please! Why all the formality?” Dimitrios said, jumping to his feet and offering a hand.

  “We are German,” she said, her accent so crisp it may as well have had corners. “Formality is a matter of personal pride.”

  “Well, I don’t have any of that.”

  She looked him up and down; her expression made it clear to all but him that he’d been judged and found wanting.

  “Don’t have any what, Herr Spiros? Formality, or personal pride?”

  “Hah! She’s a pip, this one!” he said, slapping her on the back.

  Somehow, without any discernible change, her expression shifted from disdain to outright murderous rage.

  “Yes. A pip.” It was less a comment as a hiss of venting steam.

  “Ms. Grumman, have you been through the briefing materials?”

  “I have, Herr Hearst, and I have already been in contact with the team in Colorado.” She glanced to Dimitrios, then back to Hearst. “I do not feel comfortable discussing the further details of my preparations in front of Herr Spiros.”

  “We’re all friends here, right?”
Dimitrios said.

  “There is nothing about that statement that approaches accuracy, Herr Spiros,” Grumman said.

  “What have you done regarding a holding facility for the specimen?” Hearst asked.

  “We have temporarily acquired a hangar at Denver International Airport and secured it with adequate containment and maintenance facilities. We have also acquired a large, secure cargo van and outfitted it with restraints, a coolant system, and storage for support and monitoring equipment. It is en route to the last known location of the specimen where it will meet with the local team. The private jet currently being fueled for my departure has adequate cargo capacity for the estimated size of the creature.”

  “Excellent. Have you got any questions for Mr. Spiros?”

  She looked to Dimitrios. “I have very little confidence that Herr Spiros will be able to provide any valuable insight.”

  “We’ll have plenty of time for it on the plane anyway,” Dimitrios said.

  Ms. Grumman shuddered. “Yes… Lamentably so…”

  #

  Markus and Blodgette paced along around the edge of the quarry lake. He’d just completed what he hoped would stand for a long time as the most surreal and embarrassing moment of his life. Not to put too fine a point on it, it had involved several broad leaves and the constant, vigorous instruction for Blodgette not to turn around. The endeavor had taken them deeper into the night, and had also required that he make his way at least far enough into the forest to convince him there weren’t any unknown observers with binoculars peeping on him while he took care of business. It wasn’t a rational fear, but reason and logic had been failing him of late.

  While he was now greatly relieved, he’d also spent enough time to allow the night to harden and darken further. Even the moon had adopted the nasty habit of passing behind clouds now and again. At those times, the only hint of light came from its veiled glow and the luminescent embers of Blodgette’s eyes.

  The pair thumped and crunched through the brush. Blodgette held his hand and allowed herself to be led, but the tightness of the grip and the odd peep and trill of concern revealed that some combination of the darkness and the wilderness had put her on edge. She carried the bulk of their equipment, which was just as well, because their “equipment” was mostly bundles of firewood for her to snack on. Three of the bundles were curled in her tail. The last was under her arm. It would seem she was a nervous eater, because every few minutes she would duck her head down and chomp on to the end of a piece of wood, sliding it free from the bundle to gnaw on like an oversize cigar until it had sparked and flared its way down her infernal gullet.

  She’d just finished her sixth chunk of wood when the rattle of a branch caused her to abandon the handgrip for a one-armed hug that brought them to a halt.

  “It’s okay, Blodgette. It’s okay,” Markus said, gently pushing her away—which is to say, heaving as hard as he could and barely budging her. “We’ll be to the camp complex soon. I think. Frankly, hiking was a lot easier when there were paths. And flashlights. And camp counselors. Right about now I’m wishing I’d had the foresight to get my phone back from Gale so I could use the light on it. Anyway, we should be leaving the forest any minute, and then it’ll be a straight shot to the buildings.”

  Blodgette reluctantly downgraded the hug to a handhold again and they continued. They crunched through a few more paces of underbrush before another distant crackle of branches brought them to a halt again. This time Markus heard it too. He held still and scanned the surrounding forest. He couldn’t see anything worrisome, though in this darkness an elephant could have been standing a stone’s throw away and he wouldn’t have noticed it.

  “Let’s, uh… let’s walk a little faster, okay?” Markus said.

  The dragon wasn’t as obliging as he would have hoped. Her eyes were wide, throat fluttering in a constant low warble of concern. After they’d gone a dozen more paces, the trees thinned a bit and they stepped out into what he’d hoped was the clearing around the lake. Instead it was an unexplained strip that was free of trees. It wasn’t until the moon slid out from behind the clouds again that he realized what it was.

  “That’s a telephone pole. And that’s another one. This is great! This’ll lead us right to the camp. I forgot this was here!” He took a step but found Blodgette wouldn’t budge again. “Come on, Blodgette, we’re almost… oh…”

  This time, the dragon had good reason to be frightened. Behind them, barely visible at the edge of the trees on either side, were three sets of greenish-orange eyeshine. One set moved closer. A wolf stepped out into the light of the moon.

  Markus hadn’t spent much time imagining what wild wolves might look like, but if you’d asked him, he would have envisioned a dog. Now that he was staring one down, it was clear that a dog was a dog and a wolf was a wolf. It was not just a matter of scale, although the beast eyeing him up was larger than any house pet he had ever seen. It was a matter of, for lack of a better word, intensity. When a dog looks at you and thinks, Oh boy! Dinnertime!, it means something entirely different than when a wolf looks at you with the same thought.

  “Oh… right… A nature reserve is going to have nature in it…” Markus muttered. “Blodgette, we’re just going to hurry up along this clearing here. Maybe swing that tail of yours a lot to keep them at bay. Understand?”

  In response, Blodgette released his hand, and a quiet rattling sound rang out beside him. He turned to find that she’d gone “full turtle” again, ducking as best she could into the approximate shape of the former pizza oven and stuffing as much of her doughy flesh behind its ragged steel plates as she could.

  “Blodgette? Now’s not the time to hide.”

  The other two wolves slid from the shadows. They were smaller than the first, which mostly meant they were merely frightening and not nightmarish, but that hardly improved the situation at all.

  “Okay, Markus. You’ve been to veterinary school. You’ve had zoology classes. What do we know? Wolves… uh… pack hunters. They hunt in stages. Locating prey, done. The encounter. In progress…”

  The wolves stalked closer.

  “Time’s running out, Markus. What happens during the encounter? Crap, this was during Professor Medford’s class, wasn’t it? That guy was terrible. Okay, okay… uh… oh, prey response! There’s stand ground, attack, or flee. Wolves shouldn’t attack unless we flee. You’re physically imposing enough to keep them at bay. All we have to do is make sure we don’t run.”

  Blodgette’s head perked up. Now that was a word she knew. She’d just learned it at the rest stop earlier that day. Run. She could do that.

  She unfurled herself and took off at a sprint, lumbering up to top speed in a few strides. Markus realized what she was doing a split second before the wolves did. He took off after her and closed the gap quickly. The wolves dashed after them, spreading into a coordinated attack formation like some sort of woodland fighter pilots.

  Now that his flawless plan of “don’t do anything and hope for the best” was dashed to pieces, Markus was left in a tug-of-war between the fight and flight flavors of his instincts. Blodgette was lodged firmly in “flight,” and momentum trumped tactics, so flight it would be. But as Markus scrambled up onto the base of her tail and climbed up to ride her piggyback, his mind was awash with every nature documentary he’d ever seen, which inevitably included footage of a pack of wolves taking down something many times their size. He wasn’t sure they’d be able to cope with the sizzling heat or steel armor Blodgette was sporting, but they would sure as heck be able to pluck off the juicy little pile of meat clinging to her back.

  It was too late to stop and face them down. The first steps of their retreat had rung the dinner bell. Maybe if Blodgette had the courage or knowledge to actually fight them, they’d have a chance. But if Blodgette was spooked by a grad student with a camera, she wasn’t likely to go mama bear on a pack of wolves anytime soon. As she thundered through the forest
with her armor jingling and big hunks of wood slipping from her tightly clenched tail, she was still a good deal more frightening than anything the wolves were likely to have encountered thus far. That might be enough to keep them safe until they reached shelter.

  With her almost precognitive ability to do the opposite of what Markus was hoping for, Blodgette turned toward the trees rather than following the cleared stretch of forest toward the campground. Pine boughs whipped past, slapping Markus in the face as he tried to hold tight. The wolves were getting closer now. Any one of them could easily leap up and try to pull Markus down. He scrambled higher on her back, climbing to her shoulders and leaning down across her long, crooked neck. Maybe if he could steer her, turn her head like a horse, he could get her on the right path. The most obvious place to wrangle her was via the shiny, antler-like steel horns that sprouted from her head. He grabbed hold of one and immediately regretted it. The metal was blazing hot, sizzling his hand as he touched it.

  “Ow!” he yelped, almost losing his grip as the pain shot through him.

  His cry of pain drew Blodgette’s attention. She twisted her head to chirp anxiously at Markus but didn’t stop running.

  “Blodgette! No, no! Just watch where you’re going!” he called.

  She turned back to the forest ahead in time to see a stout tree was directly in her path. She tried to stop, but several hundred pounds of panicked dragon is a force in motion that particularly likes to stay in motion. She dug two deep furrows in the forest floor trying to stop, then finally struck the tree at a barely reduced speed. Bark splintered, metal screeched, branches broke, and Markus ejected from her back, tumbling to the ground a short distance away. Adrenaline had him springing to his feet almost before he’d finished rolling.

  The wolves slowed and stalked in a circle, keeping their distance as loose branches and crackling frost continued to rain down. Blodgette was dazed from the impact but didn’t seem to be hurt.