Fatalis (32 page)

"I read about that, but it was extremely limited activity," Grand pointed out. "There was some cellular growth but not the full-scale metabolism we're seeing here."

"Yes, but maybe conditions were different in some way," Hannah said. "Some
significant
way that we're missing. Let's go through them."

Grand was tired but Hannah wanted to push him. Not just because she was curious and not just because she'd have an article to file in the morning. They were obviously missing something that would explain the reemergence of the cats and she wanted to know what that something was.

"We've had an incredible amount of rain and lightning over the past few weeks which could be a factor in some way," Hannah said. "What else? Give me words. Ideas. Anything."

"All right," Grand said. "I found the fur in what was apparently a volcanic vent."

"Volcanoes," Hannah said. "Intense heat. Could that have played a part in this?"

"Possibly."

"Things in Pompey were preserved by ash and pumice."

"Again, not alive," Grand said. "But you mentioned something a minute ago that wasn't entirely accurate yet may have something to do with this."

"What?"

"You said the kids in Argentina were freeze-dried. They weren't," Grand said. "They were frozen."

"What's the difference?"

"Freezing is intense cold," Grand said. "Freeze-drying is intense cold followed immediately by a exposure to a complete vacuum. That one-two hit preserves the object in its frozen state, but without ice. Then the object, whether it's coffee or fruit, can be restored by adding water."

"Which makes it easier to store or ship than something that's frozen," Hannah said. "Okay. What does that have to do with our situation?"

"You asked how the saber-tooths were preserved," Grand went on. "They wouldn't have been exposed to a vacuum but they might have been exposed to intense heat, which can have the same desiccating effect. When anything is burned, the water content vaporizes first, then the vessel itself disintegrates. But I wonder what would have happened if the biological matter were preserved in the nanosecond before the heat destroyed the shell."

"You mean the water is evaporated but the heat dies before the animal does?" Hannah asked.

"Yes."

"Is that possible?"

"In theory."

"That doesn't help us."

"It might," Grand said. "One of the reasons scientists have always assumed there was no volcanism in Southern California is because we don't have calderas here-volcanic craters. But I saw volcanic
vents
down there. So there definitely was lava flow."

"So you're saying-what?"

"Vents without calderas. That means the eruptions occurred somewhere else. Somewhere there might also be glaciation. Intense heat, intense cold. The one-two punch."

They fell silent. Hannah felt like her body had been mugged; she was suddenly very aware of the warmth from the heater, the heaviness of her arms, and the weight of her eyelids.

"Are you thinking?" Hannah asked.

Grand said he was.

"Good. Because my brain just shut down."

"Hannah, are you on line back at the apartment?"

"Yes. Why?"

"There's something I want to check," he said urgently. "Something that may explain the cats and a painting I saw."

Grand and Hannah entered the spacious, high-ceilinged living room of her condominium. While Hannah booted her computer on the dining room table, Grand went to the second phone line, which was located in the bedroom. He stood beside the night table and punched in Joseph Tumamait's home number. The Chumash elder answered the phone after the first ring.

"Hello, James," Tumamait said.

"How did you know?" Grand asked.

"There is unrest in the spirit world," Tumamait said. "The Great Eagle came to me in dreams. But he was different tonight."

"Different how?"

"The owl was riding his back."

"Meaning?"

"He is not alone."

More riddles. Grand didn't have time for them.

"Joseph, there's unrest in the
real
world. This is going to sound incredible but there are saber-toothed cats in the mountains. They're responsible for the killings over the past few days."

"The
haphaps
are returning," Tumamait said calmly.

"I don't believe that these cats are the destroyers," Grand said. "I've been with them. There's no cruelty in the creatures. If there were, they'd have been kings of the earth."

"Instead of us," Tumamait said.

Hannah appeared in the doorway; Grand held up a finger.

"Sheriff Gearhart is going after the cats with the intent to kill," Grand said. "He's doing this now, tonight I want to save them but I need your help."

"What do you want me to do?"

"This is an environmental issue. Call people at Fish and Game, people on the state level. Try and get them to intervene."

"They don't always listen to me."

"Joseph, we have to try. Please."

"Of course," Tumamait said. "And what are you going to do?"

"Try and learn more about the animals," Grand said. "Figure out where they're going and try to get there ahead of Gearhart."

"All right," Tumamait said. "Good luck."

Grand thanked him and hung up. He walked over to Hannah.

"Joseph Tumamait?" she asked.

Grand nodded.

"Interesting man," she said. "I should have realized you'd know him."

"He was my mentor in college. We went on a lot of digs together."

"Is he going to help?"

"He said he would," Grand said.

"Good," she said. "I'll interview him in the morning. We'll talk about exterminating a race. It will have more meaning coming from him."

That was true, the scientist thought. It scared him a little, the way Hannah knew how to spin things. He worked with facts-just facts.

He looked at Hannah. She had gotten out of her wet clothes, pulled on a white bathrobe, and looked very cozy. She also looked smaller somehow. In need of protection?

"I hope you don't mind the informality," she said, pulling the robe a little tighter. "I was cold and you were in here."

"I don't mind at all," he said.

"I've got another robe in the bathroom, if you want it."

Hannah added. "I keep it here in case I have a guest-like my dad."

"Is it his?"

"No," she said. "It was actually stolen from a hotel by some jerk I was with and then added to my bill."

"Your bill?"

"I paid for all the trips we took," she said. Her mood darkened.

"Actually, I was engaged to the asshole but he was a gold-digger so I dumped him. I keep the robe here to remind me that he was an opportunist and to not make the same mistake again."

"Well, I will take the robe if it's all right," Grand said. "I don't want to mess up your chairs."

"I also put some water on," Hannah told him. "Do you want instant coffee or tea?"

"Coffee," he said. "Black."

Hannah showed him to the bathroom. Grand left his clothes on and slipped the bathrobe over them. He felt wet and stupid. He took the robe off, took his clothes off, then put the robe back on. That felt better but still not right.

This wasn't the time to be modest. He took the robe off, took a shower, and then put just the robe back on. It might not be appropriate but it was definitely more comfortable.

Grand went back to the living room feeling self-conscious. He was used to being in caves, in dusty fields, and in cluttered surroundings. Not in a woman's home where everything looked clean and coordinated and the chair even
felt
expensive. He was glad Hannah was still in the kitchen. That gave him a chance to sit in her seat and start typing on the laptop.

He entered the keywords
American Ice Age Volcanoes
and waited. When the list of topics appeared he began scrolling down.

Hannah returned as he was reading the list. She set a mug of coffee beside the computer and leaned close.

"What are we looking for?" she asked.

Grand picked up the mug and took a sip. "Remember the other day at Painted Cave, when I told you about some Chumash art I'd discovered?"

"Yes."

"The paintings showed a volcano and a snow-covered mountain," he said. "There was a serpent in the volcano, which is consistent with Chumash eruption images, but I couldn't figure out why there was a dolphin in the white mountain. The answer may be that it wasn't a mountain."

"What was it?"

Grand found what he was looking for. He clicked on the heading. As the Web site was accessed, he said, "It was a glacier. A volcano and a glacier, side by side."

The site opened. It was an article from
Geologue Monthly
. The piece was titled, "When Ice and Lava Clashed."

"This could be it," Grand said.

Hannah got behind him. Holding her own mug, she leaned closer to his shoulder, almost to his cheek, and read along with him. Grand knew that for the rest of his life, wherever he was, whoever he was with, when he smelled Lipton he would think of Hannah Hughes and this moment.

The article described an eruption that occurred eleven thousand years ago, when Mount Rainier erupted beneath two miles of glacier in what is now west-central Washington state.

"Here it is," Hannah said excitedly. She reached over Grand and moved the mouse. The screen scrolled further. She read, "The explosive forces built beneath the unyielding ice until the surrounding terrain gave way. Chunks of ice were forced through the earth like subterranean comets, propelled by superheated gas and magma. Some of these sections of glacier may have been blasted as far as five or six hundred miles." She stood. "That's it, Jim. It has to be!"

Grand nodded and continued to read. The article said that in newly burned volcanic vents where the ice came to rest, the walls were often fractured by the intense heat and cold- which would explain the flaking he found in the subterranean cavern.

It would also explain something else. The painting in the passageway.

"What do you think?" Hannah asked.

"Two of them could have been trapped, frozen where they were, or carried along."

"It's possible," he admitted.

"Encased in ice or freeze-dried?"

"Probably the latter," Grand said. "It can get very warm in those caves. A block of ice wouldn't have lasted for thousands of years."

"And lightning couldn't have reached them if they were frozen solid," she said. "Maybe it struck them and did a Frankenstein number, brought them back to life."

"I wonder if it was lightning or something else."

"Such as?"

"The rainwater that spilled in there could have contained electrolytic elements from any number of sources," Grand said. "Hydroelectric, acid rain, chemical – any of that could have been absorbed in their skin, jump-started their metabolic processes."

"I
like
that," Hannah said. "So the tigers wake up and they continue doing whatever they were doing back then."

"It's possible," Grand said, though he was only half-listening. He was thinking about the cavern, the walls, the passageway. There weren't two Chumash paintings, there were three. And they all meant something.

"This is
incredible
," Hannah said. She leaned over Grand and bookmarked the Web site. "Okay. I've got to calm down. What we should do is rest for a few hours. Then I'll get up and write this in a way that doesn't sound impossible. Maybe get a few quotes from you, from biologists at the university, some cryogenics people. I'll also have to put someone on the environmental angle, take Gearhart to task for his blood-and-guts approach." She looked at Grand. "How's that sound to you?"

He didn't answer.

"Hey, are you okay?" Hannah asked.

Grand shook his head slowly. "I'm not sure."

"What is it? Gearhart?"

"It's more than Gearhart."

Hannah's enthusiasm quieted. She squatted beside him. "Jim, talk to me."

"There was a third painting down there. At first I thought it was a celestial design. Then I thought they were eyes."

"And what do you think now?"

"That I was right the second time."

"Eyes?"

Grand nodded. "They're staring out from the cave where a Chumash artist found them thousands of years ago. Eyes that were painted white because the artist was trying to say that they were frozen. Eyes that belonged to petrified saber-tooths inside the caves."

Hannah's expression crashed. "Oh Jesus, Jim. How many eyes were there in the painting?"

He looked at her. "Dozens."

Sitting in the passenger compartment of the highway-patrol helicopter, Gearhart was concerned when he couldn't raise Lyon on his radio. Poking his head into the cockpit, the sheriff asked the pilot to call Deputy Russo in the Bell.

There was no response.

Gearhart sat back in the vinyl seat. He looked out the window as they made a thuddingly noisy pass over the dark terrain. He felt, for a flashing instant, that he was back in Vietnam, being airlifted from a combat zone and waiting to find out if the rest of the platoon made it out in the second chopper. He hated that feeling then and he hated it now.

The flight took less than five minutes, though Gearhart knew before they reached the site that something had happened. There was no light in the sky and no call to indicate that the chopper had followed the cat to another location. His initial concern was that the chopper might have collided with one of the peaks in the dark; though Deputy Russo was an experienced night flier in the mountains, she did not usually travel this far southeast. Then he began to hope that they'd experienced mechanical trouble and had set down somewhere.