Wait a minute. There it was.
He opened it. I’m a friend of Bryn’s. She’s fine. So is Mr. Lizard. Can’t tell you anything else, but she wanted you to know. It was signed S.
Taj rubbed the bridge of his nose, tried to ease the headache that was radiating out from his sinus cavities. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, but Mungo’s plan was beginning to make sense. Taj’s judgment must be seriously impaired.
He could always call the police later if it didn’t work out.
Taj reread the “mutual friend” e-mail. Hit REPLY.
“I might be able to find someone for you,” he told Mungo. “I’ll call you back.”
“Very well,” Mungo said. “But hurry. If you find this person, we’ll have to move hastily in the extreme.”
34
WRECKING ALASKA
HAINES, ALASKA
I must have dozed off. When I woke, the truck was rattling down a two-lane highway, and I could see the inlet a little way ahead. I glanced at the cute guy, relaxed at the wheel. Whose name was Josh, he’d said.
He turned to me. “You’re awake.”
I nodded.
“Got a text from my father. He’s found a pilot for us, set it all up. We’re flying to Lake Hood, the seaplane base in Anchorage. Do you have someplace to stay?”
“No,” I said.
“You can stay with us, if you want. At Cap—er, my father’s house.”
I hesitated.
“Or we can take you to a motel.”
A motel might be better. More private, with the critter. And I wasn’t sure how close I wanted to get to Josh and his dad. I didn’t know them. Not even Josh, not really.
I synched a quick ken with the critter—still zipped inside the duffel on my lap. He kenned back to me. Awake. So he’d probably upchucked the pill. But there was a funny texture to the ken. Queasy, sort of. And antsy at the same time. I’d learned to recognize that kind of antsy.
In a perfect world, you could spend all day riding around in a pickup truck with a good-looking guy without ever once having to mention bathroom stuff. But we’re stuck with the world we have.
“Do you think we could pull over?” I asked. “My lizard has to go.”
Josh parked at the side of the road. I wished I still had that retractable leash, but the critter didn’t seem inclined to run away. He snuffled slowly up through the tall, wet weeds at the side of the road, searching for a spot he liked the smell of, until he came to a place where the weeds were mashed down in a wide swath that went on forever.
What was that about?
In the outdoor light, I could see that the critter was kind of pale. At least, paler than before. And splotchy looking. I kenned him again. Something off. He felt weaker, maybe. A little shaky.
The critter’s poop didn’t look right, either. Kind of runny and greenish. Eesh. The sooner we linked up with Dr. Jones, the better.
I folded some of the long weeds over the stuff. Biodegradable. Good to go.
I debated giving him another quarter tab. I really ought to. We were going on a plane. What if he got all frisky? What if he flamed?
I kenned him again.
Not right. Not right at all.
I just couldn’t drug him now. Hopefully, I wouldn’t live to regret it.
Back in the truck, I asked Josh about the mashed-down weeds.
“It’s the swarms,” he said. “Porcupines, mice, different kinds of insects. Started happening a few years back.” He started the engine, pulled onto the highway.
“We’ve got swarms too. My mom …” I swallowed. “Some people think they’re maybe caused by toxins in the environment. Endocrine disruptors. They mess with hormonal systems, cause chromosome damage. Monster hard to clean up. But that wouldn’t explain it up here. It’s pristine.”
“Oh yeah? PCBs float up here on the wind. They concentrate up here. Some of our sea mammals are so poisoned, their own bodies qualify as toxic waste.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No! We’re under siege. And they’re not even our poisons. They’re”—Josh glanced at me—“yours. Down in the Lower forty-eight. Like the North Pacific gyre, all that plastic swirling around in the ocean? It’ll never biodegrade, just break into smaller and smaller pieces. Poison the fish forever and move on up the food chain. We didn’t do that. You did.”
Ouch.
“And the warming. It’s worse here than anywhere, but we didn’t do that either. The beetle populations have exploded. They’re eating our forests, killing the trees. And after that come the wildfires—huge ones. Then you guys, you send your big-city lawyers up here, try to tell us that hunting and drilling are wrecking Alaska.”
Whoa. What set him off? “I don’t actually have a lawyer,” I told my knees.
“Yeah.” He looked at me. Sort of ducked his head. “I know,” he said. “I mean, not you personally, but … people don’t understand. They don’t understand Alaska.”
Maybe not. But I felt something between my shoulder blades, a funny little itch.
Definitely I would stay in a motel.
Josh turned onto an unpaved road that wound down toward the water. At the dock below, a red seaplane rocked gently in the chop. Set against the mountains and the wide, gleaming expanse of the inlet, it looked as fragile as a kite.
He parked the truck in a gravel patch in front of a small shack at water’s edge. A faded sign on the shed read SAM MILLS, PILOT. ALASKA SAFARI AIRLINES. I kenned the critter. Not quite asleep, but feeble, muddled.
Uneasy, I hitched the duffel strap over my shoulder and followed Josh inside.
It was a tiny space, crowded with beat-up furniture: a wooden desk facing the door, two metal filing cabinets against one wall, two plastic visitors’ chairs in front of the desk.
A small, white-haired woman, seated behind the desk, looked up from the computer screen and peered at us over a pair of narrow glasses. She nodded. “Josh,” she said.
He nodded back. “Ma’am.”
Ma’am? Wasn’t that a Southern thing? Did anybody actually say “ma’am” anymore? I had to admit, though, she kind of looked like a ma’am. Her hair was pinned up in a loose, wispy bun, and a black satin cord looped around the ends of her glasses and wound behind her neck. But the “ma’am” was in her expression more than anything else.
She turned to me. “You the other passenger?”
“Yes,” I said. Biting back the “ma’am.”
She looked me over, then picked up a clipboard from the desk and handed it to me. “Fill this out,” she said.
I looked at it. Name. Address. Phone. Age. All things I didn’t necessarily want to give her.
Josh took the clipboard from me. “Didn’t Cap tell you?” he said. “We’re not doing that.”
The receptionist leveled her eyes at him. Severe. “Your father,” she said, “does not determine what information this enterprise requires.”
“What about that time with those environmentalists? The enterprise didn’t require it then. Ma’am,” he added.
“You, young man, are teetering on the very precipice of insolence.” She rose from her seat, snatched the clipboard from him, then sat back down and turned to me. “Do you have any disabilities that would cause you to be unable to fly safely?”
“Uh, no,” I said.
“History of seizures?”
“No.”
“Heart attack? Stroke? Dementia?”
“Hey,” Josh said.
“Are you currently pregnant?”
“That’s way out of line!” Josh said.
I felt myself redden. “No! I don’t see what that—”
“How old are you?” the woman asked.
Uh-oh. Was this going to be like the ferry? I hesitated. What would be plausible? “Sixteen?” I said.
She just looked at me. Josh groaned.
The woman turned to Josh. “Sorry. No can do.”
“What do you mean?” he said.
“I’m not taking he
r. You, I’ll take. If you can keep a civil tongue in your head. Not her.”
“What! Cap already worked it out with you; you can’t just cancel us like that.”
“That was before I knew she was a runaway.”
Josh glanced at me. My face felt hot.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t know,” she demanded. “You young people, tuned in twenty-four/seven. I saw her on the news, so don’t even try to feign ignorance.”
The news?
“She’s on the news?” Josh said.
“And you,” the woman said to me. “What about your poor parents? They’re probably sick with worry.”
“They’re gone,” I said, feeling a sudden, sharp surge of anger. “Missing. My mom first, and then my dad. Last I heard from either one, they were in Anchorage. I’m only trying to fin—”
I stopped. Pursed my lips. My whole mouth had started trembling. I couldn’t get the words out.
“Trying to find out—” Stopped again.
“Oh, God. Don’t tell me. Your mom was the one who…. Last fall. That university professor. From, where was it? Idaho?”
“Oregon,” I said.
“Lord help me.” She slumped over her desk, rested her forehead in one hand. “He didn’t tell me that.” She sighed. “I’m going to get arrested for this. Kidnapping, aiding and abetting, transportation across state lines—”
“It’s not across state lines, it’s just Alask—” Josh said. The woman sat up, silenced him with a look. She turned to me.
“When’s the last time you went to the restroom?” she asked.
Oh, please. Not this again.
“It’s a four-hour flight,” she said. “There’s a funnel and a jar in the plane, it’s all the same to me. But maybe you’d prefer to take care of that beforehand”—she jerked a thumb toward a door at the back of the room—“rather than in the air.” Then, to Josh, “You too. Think about it.”
I thought fast, then headed for the back door. When I reached it, I turned. “When will the pilot get here?”
“The pilot?” The woman glowered at me. She stood, plucked a leather jacket from the back of her chair, and shrugged it on. “The pilot’s been here all day.”
35
DOOMED
OVER THE GULF OF ALASKA
“Have you seen it?” Mills asked.
Josh had to strain to hear her above the vibrating drone of the engine. He felt the air currents beneath them, tugging them this way, nudging them that way, bumping them up and down as they crossed the branching veins and arteries of the sky. Mills glanced at him, then looked back out the cockpit window.
“Seen what?” Josh said. He didn’t know what she meant—not for sure. He had an idea it was about the stowaway in the duffel, but he was hoping he was wrong.
It had taken them a while to get airborne, while Mills readied the plane, a sweet little de Havilland Beaver. Now they flew low over Glacier Bay Park. Over the mountain peaks, marbled with snow, and the flowing glaciers. Josh sought out that blue he loved, the light-filled blue visible in rifts in the dirty glacial ice. You couldn’t describe that blue. It was electric, unreal. No matter how many times he saw it, it always knocked him out.
Mills made constant little corrections with the controls, always moving, never still. To Josh, she almost seemed like a different person up here. The tight, disapproving line of her mouth had relaxed; she seemed completely at ease and focused. You wouldn’t think it to look at her, but people said she was one of the best bush pilots around. Ancient—yes. Prickly—yes. But good.
“Oh, come on, Josh,” Mills said. “It’s not sweaters and underwear in that duffel. Clothes do not move of their own volition.”
“Shh,” he said. “She might hear you.”
“You know she can’t hear,” Mills said. “The engine’s way too loud. Anyway, she’s dead to the world.”
He twisted around to peer into the backseat, where she sat with the duffel on her lap.
Still asleep.
She had zoned out right away. Must have been exhausted. He could study her now in a way he couldn’t when she was awake. The curve of her lashes. The little bump at the bridge of her nose. The smooth, dark hair that reached halfway down her back. A twisted strand had gotten hung up in her lashes. Josh itched to sweep it back across her cheek and tuck it behind an ear.
But he didn’t.
Again, he wondered: She’d come up here, alone, all the way from Oregon? Taking care of that “pet” of hers? Feeding it? Hiding it?
How had she done that?
She was definitely flaky, but you couldn’t do what she’d done if you weren’t pretty smart … and really brave.
Could he have done it?
Was he that brave?
She’d draped one hand protectively across the duffel. Josh could make out the shape of the animal inside—a lump where the snout pressed up against the fabric, a bulge where the belly was, the hint of a curve above the spines of the tail.
Mills spoke again. “We both know what your father and his cronies are into. This is better than a fossil, though, isn’t it?”
How did she know that? Had Cap said something?
Mills went on, as if Josh had responded. As if they were having an actual conversation. “The thing I don’t understand is, how can you be so all-fired sure you’re right? You and Cap and all your ilk. What if the genetic material in that girl’s bag could save us, one way or another? Or even just a few of us? What if it could cure prostate cancer, or Parkinson’s disease, or diabetes? What you’re doing is irrevocable. You can’t change your minds later—none of us can. When the genome’s gone, it’s gone.”
“Cap’s not going to hurt it,” Josh said.
Mills turned to look at him. “Do you really believe that?”
“Yeah. He’s just doing fossils. He’s strict about poaching live animals.”
“If you say so. But ten bucks says he’ll tell you something like this: ‘They’re not viable. There’s no ecological niche for them. They’d just screw things up.’ And if you press him, he’ll say, ‘What do you want to do, bring back the woolly mammoths? The giant sloths? T. rex? How well do you think that would work, environmentally? Where do you draw the line?’”
“You’re wrong,” Josh said. “You don’t know him.”
“Do you?”
Josh shifted, uncomfortable. He remembered when he’d been to Cap’s place earlier this spring. Dirty dishes heaped in the sink. Stacks of bills on the kitchen counter. The truck ran rough, and the house looked like it was molting strips of yellowish paint.
So unlike Cap. “Shipshape” used to be his motto.
“It’s a good point about the ecological niche,” Mills said. “In case you didn’t notice. How big is this animal going to be? How dangerous? Where do you put it so it doesn’t wreck everything in the environment? That’s definitely a problem. On the other hand, it’s here. It wasn’t cloned from prehistoric amber. It hatched out of an egg. Which was here, not manufactured in a lab. So it’s not extinct. Not yet. It’s in our care.”
How did she know all that, about the egg? Who had she been talking to? But Josh kept his mouth shut. If he didn’t argue, eventually she’d run out of steam.
“And another thing: I don’t want that girl getting hurt,” Mills said.
“Cap would never do that!”
“No,” she said. “I know he wouldn’t. Not physically. I’m sure Cap will see she gets home or wherever she needs to be. But mark my words, her ‘pet’ is going to disappear. And that’s going to hurt her. Anyone can see it. Once Cap gets his mitts on that thing, it’s doomed.”
Doomed. Josh flashed back to the cave, to those fossils in the eggs. A word popped into his head: Exquisite. Those tiny, curled-up claws. The rib cage, as perfectly drawn as the circuits on a computer chip. The precise little knobs of the spine and tail. He remembered that feeling he’d had there, a feeling of expanding inside—huge and calm.
He looked back again a
t Bryn. At her hand moving up and down with the animal’s breathing. She looked so unprotected, so vulnerable.
Mills broke into his thoughts. “You sure you want me to take her to Anchorage? I could take her somewhere else. In fact, I’ve got half a mind to.”
“No,” Josh said. Absolutely not. Cap would be waiting. Josh remembered his voice on the phone. Even now, the memory warmed him. Good work, son.
No, it would be fine.
“Okay, then,” Mills said.
Clouds crept in, thin strands at first, then long, white sheets of them, streaming past the windows. Blotting out the mountains and the sea.
Mills cleared her throat. “Does it have wings?” she asked.
Josh hesitated. What the hell. “Yeah,” he said. “She’s got it in some kind of jacket-looking thing. But you can see the wing shapes beneath it.”
“Wings.” Mills shook her head. “I’d better not see it, then. If I saw wings, no matter how much damage the animal could cause, there’s no way I could turn it over to your father.”
Why do you think
I’ve made myself scarce,
Hid from you year after year?
So you can name me?
So you can claim me?
Now I’ve gone and I won’t reappear.
—from “Cryptid Rant,” by Mutant Tide
One hit, another hit—
It starts with such a little bit.
But soon there’s just no stopping it:
Gone viral!
Every person that you know
Sends your tidbit, makes it go
Across the World Wide Web, oh ho!:
Gone viral!
Fifty, a hundred grand
A million, billion, trillion, and
A googolplex links cross the land:
Gone viral!
—from “Gone Viral!” by Pixel Slippers
36
CELEBRITY LIZARD
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
Ancient, Strange, and Lovely Page 17