“Go back?” Levine said. “Now? What about our observations? What about the other cameras we want to place and—”
“I don’t know, maybe it’d be good to take a break.”
Levine stared at him in disbelief. He said nothing.
Thorne and the kids looked at Malcolm silently.
“Well, it seems to me,” Malcolm said, “that if Sarah’s coming all the way from Africa, we should be there to greet her.” He shrugged. “I think it’s simple politeness.”
Thorne said, “I didn’t realize that, uh . . .”
“No, no,” Malcolm said quickly. “It’s nothing like that. I just, uh . . . You know, maybe she’s not even coming.” He looked suddenly uncertain. “Did she say she was coming?”
“She said she’d think about it.”
Malcolm frowned. “Then she’s coming. If Sarah said that, she’s coming. I know her. So. What do you say, want to go back?”
“Certainly not,” Levine said, peering through binoculars. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving here now.”
Malcolm turned. “Doc? Want to go back?”
“Sure,” Thorne said, wiping his forehead. “It’s hot.”
“If I know Sarah,” Malcolm said, climbing down the scaffolding, “she’s going to show up on this island just looking great.”
Cave
She struggled upward, and her head broke the surface, but she saw only water—great swells rising fifteen feet above her, on all sides. The power of the ocean was immense. The surge dragged her forward, then back, and she was helpless to resist. She could not see the boat anywhere, only foaming sea, on all sides. She could not see the island, only water. Only water. She fought a sense of overwhelming panic.
She tried to kick against the current, but her boots were leaden. She sank down again, and struggled back, gasping for air. She had to get her boots off, somehow. She gulped a breath and ducked her head under the water, and tried to unlace the boots. Her lungs burned as she fumbled with the knots. The ocean swept her back and forth, ceaselessly.
She got one boot off, gulped air, and ducked down again. Her fingers were stiff with cold and fright, as she worked on the other boot. It seemed to take hours. Finally her legs were free, light, and she dogpaddled, catching her breath. The surge lifted her high, dropped her again. She could not see the island. She felt panic again. She turned, and felt the surge lift once more. And then she saw the island.
The sheer cliffs were close, frighteningly close. The waves boomed as they smashed against the rocks. She was no more than fifty yards offshore, being swept inexorably toward the crashing surf. On the next crest, she saw the cave, a hundred yards to her right. She tried to swim toward it, but it was hopeless. She had no power at all to move in this gigantic surf. She felt only the strength of the sea, sweeping her to the cliffs.
Panic made her heart race. She knew she would be instantly killed. A wave crested over her; she gulped sea water, and coughed. Her eyes blurred. She felt nausea and deep, deep terror.
She put her head down and began to swim, arm over arm, kicking as hard as she could. She had no sense of movement, only the sideways pull of the surge. She dared not look up. She kicked harder. When she raised her head for another breath, she saw she had moved a little—not much, but a little—to the north. She was a little nearer to the cave.
She was encouraged, but she was terrified. She had so little strength! Her arms and legs ached with her effort. Her lungs burned. Her breath came in short ragged heaving gasps. She coughed again, grabbed another breath, put her head down and kicked onward.
Even with her head in the water, she heard the deep boom of the surf against the cliffs. She kicked with all her might. The currents and surge moved her left and right, forward and back. It was hopeless. But still she tried.
Gradually, the ache in her muscles became a steady dull pain. She felt she had lived with this pain all her life. She did not notice it any more. She kicked on, oblivious.
When she felt the surge lift her up again, she raised her head for a breath. She was startled to see that the cave was very close. A few more strokes and she would be swept inside it. She had thought the current might be less severe around the cave. But it wasn’t; on either side of the opening, the waves crashed high, climbing the cliff walls, and then falling back. The boat was nowhere in sight.
She ducked her head down again, kicked forward, using the last of her strength. She could feel her entire body weakening. She could not last much longer. She knew she was being carried toward the cliffs. She heard the boom of the surf louder now, and she kicked again, and suddenly a huge swell swept her up, lifting her, carrying her toward the cliffs. She was powerless to resist it. She raised her head to look, and saw darkness, inky darkness.
In her exhaustion and pain, she realized that she was inside the cave. She had been swept into the cave! The booming sound was hollow, reverberating. It was too dark to see the walls on either side. The current was intense, sweeping her ever deeper. She gasped for breath and paddled ineffectually. Her body scraped against rock; she felt a moment of searing pain, and then she was swept farther into the depths of the cave. But now there was a difference. She saw faint light on the ceiling, and the water around her seemed to glow. The surge lessened. She found it easier to keep her head above water. She saw hot light ahead, brilliantly hot—the end of the cave.
And suddenly, astonishingly, she was carried through, and burst into sunlight and open air. She found herself in the middle of a broad muddy river, surrounded by dense green foliage. The air was hot and still; she heard the distant cries of jungle birds.
Up ahead, around a bend in the river, she saw the stern of Dodgson’s boat, already tied up to the shore. She could not see any of the people, and she didn’t want to see them.
Summoning her remaining strength, she kicked toward shore, and clutched at a stand of mangroves, growing thickly along the water’s edge. Too weak to hold on, she hooked her arm around a root, and lay on her back in the gentle current, looking up at the sky, gasping for breath. She did not know how much time passed, but finally she felt strong enough to haul herself arm over arm along the mangrove roots at the water’s edge, until she came to a narrow break in the foliage, leading to a patch of muddy shore beyond. As she dragged herself out of the water, and up on the slippery bank, she noticed several rather large animal footprints in the mud. They were curious, three-toed footprints, with each toe ending in a large claw . . .
She bent to examine them more closely, and then she felt the earth vibrating, trembling beneath her hands. A large shadow fell over her and she looked up in astonishment at the leathery, pale underbelly of an enormous animal. She was too weak to react, even to raise her head.
The last thing she saw was a huge leathery foot landing beside her, squishing in the mud, and a soft snorting sound. And then suddenly, abruptly, exhaustion overtook her, and Sarah Harding collapsed, and fell onto her back. Her eyes rolled up into her head, and she lost consciousness.
Dodgson
A few yards up from the shore of the river, Lewis Dodgson climbed into the custom-made Jeep Wrangler and slammed the door shut. Beside him in the passenger seat, Howard King was wringing his hands. He said, “How could you have done that to her?”
“Done what?” George Baselton said, from the back seat.
Dodgson did not reply. He turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled to life. He popped the four-wheel drive into gear and headed up the hill into the jungle, away from the boat at the shore.
“How could you?” King said again, agitated. “I mean, Jesus.”
“What happened was an accident,” Dodgson said.
“An accident? An accident?”
“That’s right, an accident,” Dodgson said calmly. “She fell overboard.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Baselton said.
King was shaking his head. “Jesus, what if somebody comes to investigate and—”
“What if they do?” Dodgson said, interr
upting him. “We were in rough seas, she was standing at the bow, a big wave hit us and she was washed overboard. She couldn’t swim very well. We circled and looked for her, but there was no hope. A very unfortunate accident. So what are you concerned about?”
“What am I concerned about?”
“Yes, Howard. Exactly what the fuck are you concerned about?”
“I saw it, for Christ’s sake—”
“No, you didn’t,” Dodgson said.
“I didn’t see anything,” Baselton said. “I was down below, the whole time.”
“That’s fine for you,” Howard King said. “But what if there’s an investigation?”
The Jeep bounced up the dirt track, moving deeper into the jungle. “There won’t be,” Dodgson said. “She left Africa in a hurry, and she didn’t tell anybody where she was going.”
“How do you know?” King whined.
“Because she told me, Howard. That’s how I know. Now get the map out and stop moaning. You knew the deal when you joined me.”
“I didn’t know you were going to kill somebody, for Christ’s sake.”
“Howard,” Dodgson said, with a sigh. “Nothing’s going to happen. Get the map out.”
“How do you know?” King said.
“Because I know what I’m doing,” Dodgson said. “That’s why. Unlike Malcolm and Thorne, who are somewhere on this island, screwing around, doing fuck knows what in this damned jungle.”
Mention of the others caused a new worry. Fretting, King said, “Maybe we’ll run into them. . . .”
“No, Howard, we won’t. They’ll never even know we’re here. We’re only going to be on this island for four hours, remember? Land at one. Back on the boat by five. Back at the port by seven. Back in San Francisco by midnight. Bang. Done. Finito. And finally, after all these years, I’ll have what I should have had long ago.”
“Dinosaur embryos,” Baselton said.
“Embryos?” King asked, surprised.
“Oh, I’m not interested in embryos any more,” Dodgson said. “Years ago, I tried to get frozen embryos, but there’s no reason to bother with embryos now. I want fertilized eggs. And in four hours, I’ll have them from every species on this island.”
“How can you do that in four hours?”
“Because I already know the precise location of every dinosaur breeding site on the island. The map, Howard.”
King opened the map. It was a large topographical chart of the island, two feet by three feet, showing terrain elevations in blue contours. At several places in lowland valleys, there were dense red concentric circles. In some places, clusters of circles. “What’s this?” King said.
“Why don’t you read what it says,” Dodgson said.
King turned the map, and looked at the legend. “ ‘Sigma data Landsat/Nordstat mixed spectra VSFR/FASLR/IFFVR.’ And then a bunch of numbers. No, wait. Dates.”
“Correct,” Dodgson said. “Dates.”
“Pass dates? This is a summary chart, combining data from several satellite passes?”
“Correct.”
King frowned. “And it looks like . . . visible spectrum, and false aperture radar, and . . . what?”
“Infrared. Broadband thermal VR.” Dodgson smiled. “I did all this in about two hours. Downloaded all the satellite data, summarized it, and had the answers I wanted.”
“I get it,” King said. “These red circles are infrared signatures!”
“Yes,” Dodgson said. “Big animals leave big signatures. I got all the satellite flybys over this island for the last few years, and mapped the location of heat sources. And the locations overlapped from pass to pass, which is what makes these red concentric marks. Meaning that the animals tend to be located in these particular places. Why?” He turned to King. “Because these are the nesting sites.”
“Yes. They must be,” Baselton said.
“Maybe that’s where they eat,” King said.
Dodgson shook his head irritably. “Obviously, those circles can’t be feeding sites.”
“Why not?”
“Because these animals average twenty tons apiece, that’s why. You get a herd of twenty-ton dinos, and you’re talking a combined biomass of more than half a million pounds moving through the forest. That many big animals are going to eat a lot of plant matter in the course of a day. And the only way they can do that is by moving. Right?”
“I guess . . .”
“You guess? Look around you, Howard. Do you see any denuded sections of forest? No, you don’t. They eat a few leaves from the trees, and move on. Trust me, these animals have to move to eat. But what they don’t move is their nesting sites. So these red circles must be nesting sites.” He glanced at the map. “And unless I’m wrong, the first of the nests is just over this rise, and down the hill on the other side.”
The Jeep fishtailed in a patch of mud, and ground forward, lurching up the hill.
Mating Calls
Richard Levine stood in the high hide, staring at the herds through binoculars. Malcolm had gone back to the trailer with the others, leaving Levine alone. In fact, Levine was relieved to have him gone. Levine was quite content to make observations on these extraordinary animals, and he was aware that Malcolm did not share his boundless enthusiasm. Indeed, Malcolm always seemed to have other considerations on his mind. And Malcolm was notably impatient with the act of observation—he wanted to analyze the data, but he did not want to collect it.
Of course, among scientists, that represented a well-known difference in personality. Physics was a perfect example. The experimentalists and the theorists lived in utterly different worlds, passing papers back and forth but sharing little else in common. It was almost as if they were in different disciplines.
And for Levine and Malcolm, the difference in their approach had surfaced early, back in the Santa Fe days. Both men were interested in extinction, but Malcolm approached the subject broadly, from a purely mathematical standpoint. His detachment, his inexorable formulas, had fascinated Levine, and the two men began an informal exchange over frequent lunches: Levine taught Malcolm paleontology; Malcolm taught Levine nonlinear mathematics. They began to draw some tentative conclusions which both found exciting. But they also began to disagree. More than once they were asked to leave the restaurant; then they would go out into the heat of Guadelupe Street, and walk back toward the river, still shouting at each other, while approaching tourists hurried to the other side of the street.
In the end, their differences came down to personalities. Malcolm considered Levine pedantic and fussy, preoccupied with petty details. Levine never saw the big picture. He never looked at the consequences of his actions. For his own part, Levine did not hesitate to call Malcolm imperious and detached, indifferent to details.
“God is in the details,” Levine once reminded him.
“Maybe your God,” Malcolm shot back. “Not mine. Mine is in the process.”
Standing in the high hide, Levine thought that answer was exactly what you would expect from a mathematician. Levine was quite satisfied that details were everything, at least in biology, and that the most common failing of his biological colleagues was insufficient attention to detail.
For himself, Levine lived for the details, and he could not ever let them go. Like the animal that had attacked him with Diego. Levine thought of it often, turning it over and over again, reliving the events. Because there was something troubling, some impression that he could not get right.
The animal had attacked quickly, and he had sensed it was a basic theropod form—hind legs, stiff tail, large skull, the usual—but in the brief flash in which he had seen the creature, there seemed to be a peculiarity around the orbits, which made him think of Carnotaurus sastrei. From the Gorro Frigo formation in Argentina. And in addition, the skin was extremely unusual, it seemed to be a sort of bright mottled green, but there was something about it . . .
He shrugged. The troubling idea hung in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t
get to it. He just couldn’t get it.
Reluctantly, Levine turned his attention to the parasaur herd, browsing by the river, alongside the apatosaurs. He listened as the parasaurs made their distinctive, low trumpeting sounds. Levine noticed that most often the parasaurs made a sound of short duration, a kind of rumbling honk. Sometimes, several animals made this sound at once, or very nearly overlapping; so it seemed to be an audible way of indicating to the herd where all the members were. Then there was a much longer, more dramatic trumpeting call. This sound was made infrequently, and only by the two largest animals in the herd, which raised their heads and trumpeted loud and long. But what did the sound mean?
Standing there in the hot sun, Levine decided to perform a little experiment. He cupped his hands around his mouth, and imitated the parasaur’s trumpeting cry. It wasn’t a very good imitation, but immediately the lead parasaur looked up, turning its head this way and that. And it gave a low cry, answering Levine.
Levine gave a second call.
Again, the parasaur answered.
Levine was pleased by this response, and made an entry in his notebook. But when he looked up again, he was surprised to see that the parasaur herd was drifting away from the apatosaurs. They collected together, formed a single line, and began to walk directly toward the high hide.
Levine started to sweat.
What had he done? In some bizarre corner of his mind, he wondered if he had imitated a mating cry. That was all he needed, to attract a randy dinosaur. Who knew how these animals behaved in mating? With growing anxiety, he watched them march forward. Probably, he should call Malcolm, and ask his advice. But as he thought about it, he realized that by imitating that cry he had interfered with the environment, introduced a new variable. He had done exactly what he had told Thorne he did not intend to do. It was thoughtless, of course. And surely not very important in the scheme of things. But Malcolm was certain to give him hell about it.
The Lost World Page 21