The Lost World (37 page)

"My God!" Levine exclaimed, staring out the window.

"Sorry," Harding said "But I had to turn on the lights. That boy needs help. I can't do it in the dark."

Levine did not answer her. He was staring out the window, trying to comprehend what he had just seen. He now realized what he had glimpsed the day Diego was killed. That brief momentary sense that something was wrong. Levine now knew what it was. But it was quite beyond anything that was known among terrestrial animals and -

"What is it?" she said, standing alongside him at the window. "Is it Thorne?"

"Look," Levine said.

She stared out through the bars. "At the bushes? What7 What am I supposed to - "

Look," he said.

She watched for a moment longer, then shook her head. "I'm sorry."

"Start at the bottom of the bushes," Levine told her. "Then let your eyes move up very slowly…Just look…and you'll see the outline."

He heard her sigh. "I'm sorry."

"Then turn out the lights again," he said. "And you'll see,"

She turned the lights out, and for a moment Levine saw the two animals in sharp relief, their bodies pale white with vertical stripes in the moonlight. Almost immediately, the pattern started to fade.

Harding came back, pushed in alongside him, and this time she saw the animals instantly. Just as Levine knew she would.

"No shit," she said. "There are two of them?"

"Yes. Side by side."

"And…is the pattern fading?"

"Yes. It's fading." As they watched, the striped pattern on their skins was replaced by the leafy pattern of the rhododendrons behind them. Once again, the two dinosaurs blended into invisibility. But such complex patterning implied that their epidermal layers were arranged in a manner similar to the chromatophores of marine invertebrates. The subtlety of shading, the rapidity of the changes all suggested -

Harding frowned. "What are they?" she asked.

"Chameleons of unparalleled skill, obviously. Although I'm not sure one is entirely justified in referring to them as chameleons, since technically chameleons have only the ability - "

"What are they?" Sarah said impatiently.

"Actually, I'd say they're Carnotaurus sastrei. Type specimen's from Patagonia. Two meters in height, with distinctive heads - you notice the short, bulldog snouts, and the pair of large horns above the eyes? Almost like wings - "

"They're carnivores?"

"Yes, of course, they have the - "

"Where's Thorne?"

"He went into that clump of bushes to the right, some time ago. I haven't seen him, but - "

"What do we do?" she said.

"Do?" Levine said. "I'm not sure I follow you."

"We have to do something," she said, speaking slowly, as if he were a child. "We have to help Thorne get back."

"I don't know how," Levine said. "Those animals must weigh five hundred pounds each. And there are two of them. I told him not to go out in the first place. But now…"

Harding frowned. Staring out, she said, "Go turn the lights back on."

"I'd prefer to - "

"Go turn the lights back on!"

Levine got up irritably. He had been relishing his remarkable discovery, a truly unanticipated feature of dinosaurs - although not, of course, entirely without precedent among related vertebrates - and now this little muscle-bound female was barking orders at him. Levine was offended. After all, she was riot much of a scientist. She was a naturalist. A field devoid of theory. One of those people who poked around in animal crap and imagined they were doing original research. A nice outdoor life, is all it amounted to. It wasn't science by any stretch -

"On!" Harding shouted, looking out the window.

He flicked the lights on, and started to head back to the window.

Hastily, he went back and turned them off.

"On!"

He turned them on again.

She got up from the window, and crossed the room.,They didn t like that," she said. "It bothered them."

"Well, there's probably a refractory period - "

"Yeah, I think so. Here. Open these." She scooped up a handful of flashlights from one of the shelves, handed them to him, then went and got batteries from an adjacent wire rack. "I hope these still work."

"What are you going to do?" Levine said.

"We," she said, grimly. "We."

Thorne stood in the darkness of the shed, staring outward through the open doors. Someone had been turning the lights on and off inside the store. Then, for a while they remained on. But now suddenly they went off again. The area in front of the shed was lit only by moonlight.

He heard movement, a soft rustling. He heard the breathing again. And then he saw the two dinosaurs, walking upright with stiff tails. Their skin patterns seemed to shift as they walked, and it was difficult to follow them, but they were moving toward the shed.

They arrived at the entrance, their bodies silhouetted against the moonlight beyond, their outlines finally clear. They looked like small tyrannosaurs, except they had protuberances above the eyes, and they had very small, stubby forelimbs. The carnivores ducked their squarish heads down, and looked into the shed cautiously. Snorting, sniffing. Their tails swinging slowly behind them.

They were really too big to come inside, and for a moment he hoped that they would not. Then the first of them lowered its head, growled, and stepped through the entrance.

Thorne held his breath. He was trying to think what to do, but he couldn't think of anything at all. The animals were methodical, the first one moving aside so the second could enter as well,

Suddenly, from along the side of the store, a half-dozen glaring lights shone out in bright beams. The lights moved, splashed on the dinosaurs' bodies. The beams began to move back and forth in slow, erratic patterns, like searchlights.

The dinosaurs were clearly visible, and they didn't like it. They growled and tried to step away from the lights, but the beams moved continuously, searching them out, crisscrossing over their bodies. As the lights passed over their torsos, the skin paled in response, reproducing the movement of the beams, after the lights had moved on. Their bodies streaking white, fading to dark, streaking white again.

The lights never stopped moving, except when they shone into the faces of the dinosaurs, and into their eyes. The big eyes blinked beneath their hooded wings; the animals twitched their heads and ducked away, as if annoyed by flies.

The dinosaurs became agitated. They turned, backing out of the shed, and bellowed loudly at the moving lights.

Still the lights moved, relentlessly swinging back and forth in the night. The pattern of movement was complex, confusing. The dinosaurs bellowed again, and took a menacing step toward the lights. But it was half-hearted. They clearly didn't like being around these moving sources. After a moment, they shuffled off, the lights following them, driving them away past the tennis courts.

Thorne moved forward.

He heard Harding say, "Doc? Better get out of there, before they decide to come back."

Thorne moved quickly toward the lights. He found himself standing beside Levine and Harding. They were swinging fistfuls of flashlights back and forth.

They all went back to the store.

Inside, Levine slammed the door shut, and sagged back against it. "I was never so frightened in my entire life."

"Richard," Harding said coldly. "Get a grip on yourself." She crossed the room, and placed the flashlights on the counter.

"Going out there was insane," Levine said, wiping his forehead. He was drenched in sweat, his shirt stained dark.

"Actually, it was a slam dunk," Harding said. She turned to Thorne. "You could see they had a refractory period for skin response. It's fast compared to, say, an octopus, but it's still there. My assumption was that those dinosaurs were like all animals that rely on camouflage. They're basically ambushers. They're not particularly fast or active. They stand motionless for hours in an unchanging environment, disappearing into the background, and they wait until some unsuspecting meal comes along. But if they have to keep adjusting to new light conditions, they know they can't hide. They get anxious. And if they get anxious enough, they finally just run away. Which is what happened."

Levine turned and glared angrily at Thorne. "This was all your fault. If you hadn't gone out there that way, just wandering off - "

"Richard," Harding said, cutting him off. "We need gas or we'll never get out of here. Don't you want to get out of here?"

Levine said nothing. He sulked.

"Well," Thorne said, "there wasn't any gas in the shed anyway."

"Hey, everybody," Sarah said. "Look who's here!"

Arby came forward, leaning on Kelly. He had changed into clothes from the store: a pair of swimming trunks and a tee shirt that said "InGen Bioengineering Labs" and beneath, "We Make The Future."

Arby had a black eye, a swollen cheekbone, and a cut that Harding had bandaged on his forehead. His arms and legs were badly bruised. But he was walking, and he managed a crooked smile.

Thorne said, "How do you feel, son?"

Arby said, "You know what I want more than anything, right now?"

"What?" Thorne said.

"Diet Coke," Arby said. "And a lot of aspirin."

Sarah bent over Malcolm. He was humming softly, staring upward. "How is Arby?" he asked.

"He'll be okay."

"Does he need any morphine?" Malcolm asked.

"No, I don't think so."

"Good," Malcolm said. He stretched out his arm, rolling up the sleeve.

Thorne cleaned the nest out of the microwave, and heated up some canned beef stew. He found a package of paper plates decorated in a Halloween motif - pumpkins and bats - and spooned the food onto the plates. The two kids ate hungrily.

He gave a plate to Sarah, then turned to Levine. "What about you?"

Levine was staring out the window. "No."

Thorne shrugged.

Arby came over, holding his plate. "Is there any more?"

"Sure," Thorne said. He gave him his own plate.

Levine went over and sat with Malcolm. Levine said, "Well, at least we were right about one thing. This island was a true lost world - a pristine, untouched ecology. We were right from the beginning."

Malcolm looked over, and raised his head. "Are you joking?" he said. "What about all the dead apatosaurs?"

"I've been thinking about that," Levine said. "The raptors killed them, obviously. And then the raptors - "

"Did what? Malcolm said. "Dragged them to their nest? Those animals weigh hundreds of tons, Richard. A hundred raptors couldn't drag them. No, no." He sighed. "The carcasses must have floated to a bend in the river, where they beached. The raptors made their nest at a source of convenient food supply - dead apatosaurs."

"Well, possibly…"

"But why so many dead apatosaurs, Richard? Why do none of the animals attain adulthood? And why are there so many predators on the island?"

"Well. We need more data, of course - " Levine began.

"No, we don't," Malcolm said. "Didn't you go through the lab? We already know the answer."

"What is it?" Levine said, irritably.

"Prions," Malcolm said, closing his eyes.

Levine frowned. "What're prions?"

Malcolm sighed.

"Ian," Levine said, "What are prions?"

"Go away," Malcolm said, waving his hand.

Arby was curled up in a cornet, near sleep. Thorne rolled up a tee shirt, and put it under the boy's head. Arby mumbled something, and smiled.

In a few moments, he began to snore.

Thorne got up and went over to Sarah, who was standing by the window. Outside, the sky was beginning to lighten above the trees, turning pale blue.

"How much time now?" she said.

Thorne looked at his watch. "Maybe an hour."

She started to pace. "We've got to get gas," she said. "If we have gas we can drive the Jeep to the helicopter site."

"But there's no gas," Thorne said.

"There must be some, somewhere." She continued to pace. "You tried the pumps…"

"Yes, They're dry."

"What about inside the lab?"

"I don't think so."

"Where else? What about the trailer?"

Thorne shook his head. "It's just a passive tow-trailer. The other unit has an auxiliary generator and some gas tanks. But it went over the cliff."

"Maybe the tanks didn't rupture when it fell. We still have the motorcycle. Maybe I can go out there and - "

"Sarah," he said.

"It's worth a try."

"Sarah - "

From the window, Levine said softly, "Heads up. We have visitors."

I
n the predawn light, the dinosaurs came out of the bushes and went directly toward the Jeep. There were six of them, big brown duckbills fifteen feet high, with curving snouts.

"Maiasaurs," Levine said, "I didn't know there were any here." "What are they doing?"

The huge animals clustered around the jeep, and immediately began to tear it apart. One ripped away the canvas top. Another poked at the roll bar, rocking the vehicle back and forth.

"I don't understand," Levine said. "They're hadrosaurs. Herbivores. This aggressiveness is quite uncharacteristic."

"Uh-huh," Thorne said. As they watched, the maiasaurs tipped the jeep over. The vehicle crashed over on its side. One of the adults reared up, and stood on the side panels. Its huge feet crushed the vehicle inward.

But when the Jeep fell over, two white Styrofoam cases tumbled out onto the ground. The maiasaurs seemed to be focused on these cases. They nipped at the Styrofoam, tossing chunks of white around the ground. They moved hurriedly, in a kind of frenzy.

"Something to eat?" Levine said. "Some kind of dinosaur catnip? What?"

Then the top of one case tore away, and they saw a cracked egg inside. Protruding from the egg was a wrinkled bit of flesh. The maiasaurs slowed. Their movements were now cautious, gentle. They honked and grunted. The big bodies of the animals blocked their view.

There was a squeaking sound.

"You're kidding," Levine said.

On the ground, a tiny animal moved about. Its body was pale brown, almost white. It tried to stand, but flopped down at once. It was barely a foot long, with wrinkled folds of flesh around its neck. In a moment, a second animal tumbled out beside it.

Harding sighed.

Slowly, one of the maiasaurs ducked its huge head down, and gently scooped the baby up in its broad bill. It kept its mouth open as it raised its head. The baby sat calmly on the adult's tongue, looking around with its tiny head as it rose high into the air.

The second baby was picked up. The adults milled around for a moment, as if unsure whether there was more to do, and then, honking loudly, they all moved off.

Leaving behind a crumpled, shattered vehicle.

Thorne said, "I guess gas is no longer a problem."

"I guess not," Sarah said.

Thorne stared at the wreckage of the Jeep, shaking his head. "It's worse than a head-on collision," he said. "It looks like it's been put in a compactor. Just wasn't built for those sorts of stresses."

Levine snorted. "Engineers in Detroit didn't expect a five-ton animal to stand on it."

"You know," Thorne said, "I would have liked to see how our own car stood up under that."

"You mean, because we beefed it up?"

"Yes," Thorne said. "We really built it to take fantastic stresses. Huge stresses. Ran it through computer programs, added those honeycomb panels, the whole - "

"Wait a minute," Harding said, turning away from the window. "What are you talking about?"

"The other car," Thorne said.

"What other car?"

"The car we brought," he said. "The Explorer."

"Of course!" she said, suddenly excited. "There's another car! I completely forgot! The Explorer!"

"Well, it's history now," Thorne said. "It shorted out last night, when I was coming back to the trailer. I ran it through a puddle and it shorted out."

"So? Maybe it still - "

"No," Thorne said, shaking his head. "A short like that'd blow the VR. It's an electric car. It's dead."

"I'm surprised you don't have circuit breakers for that."

"Well, we never used to put them in, although on this latest version…He trailed off. He shook his head. "I can't believe it."

"The car has circuit breakers?"

"Yes, Eddie put them in, last minute."

"So the car might still run?"

"Yes, it probably would, if you reset the breakers."

"Where is it?" she said. She was heading for the motorcycle.

"I left it on that side road that runs from the ridge road down to the hide. But Sarah - "

"It's our only chance," she said. She pulled on her radio headset, adjusted the microphone to her cheek, and rolled the motorcycle to the door. "Call me," she said. "I'm going to go find us a car."

They watched through the windows. In the early-morning light, she climbed onto the motorcycle, and roared off up the hill.

Levine watched her go. "What do you figure her odds are?"

Thorne just shook his head.

The radio crackled. "Doc."

Thorne picked it up. "Yes, Sarah."

"I'm coming up the hill now. I see…there's six of them."

"Raptors?"

"Yeah. They're, uh…Listen. I'm going to try another path. I see a - "

The radio crackled.

"Sarah?" She was breaking up.

" - sort of a game trail that - here - think I better - "

"Sarah," Thorne said. "You're breaking up."

" - do now. So just - ish me luck…"

Over the radio, they heard the hum of the bike. Then they heard another sound, which might have been an animal snarl, and might have been more static. Thorne bent forward, holding the radio close to his ear. Then, abruptly, the radio clicked and was silent. He said, "Sarah?"

There was no answer.

"Maybe she turned it off," Levine said.

Thorne shook his head. "Sarah?"

Nothing.

"Sarah? Are you there?"

They waited.

Nothing.

"Hell," Thorne said.

Time passed slowly, Levine stood by the window, staring out. Kelly was snoring in a corner. Arby lay next to Malcolm, fast asleep. And Malcolm was humming tunelessly.

Thorne sat on the floor in the center of the room, leaning back against the checkout Counter. Every so often, he'd pick up the radio and try to call Sarah, but there was never any answer. He tried all six channels. There was no answer on any of them.

Eventually he stopped trying.

The radio crackled. " - ate these damned things. Never work right." A grunt. "Can't figure out what - things - damn."

Across the room, Levine sat forward.

Thorne grabbed the radio. "Sarah? Sarah?"

"Finally," she said, her voice crackling. "Where the hell have you been, Doc?"

"Are you all right?"

"Of course I'm all right."

"There's something wrong with your radio. You're breaking up."

"Yeah? What should I do?"

"Try screwing down the cover on your battery pack. It's probably loose."

"No. I mean, what should I do about the car?"

Thorne said, "What?"

"I'm at the car, Doc, I'm there. What should I do?"

Levine glanced at his watch. "Twenty minutes until the helicopter arrives, " he said. "You know, she just might make it."