He crouched down by the nearest dung pile, and reached slowly forward.
“Dr. Levine!”
He glanced back, annoyed, and in that moment one of the compys leapt forward and bit his hand. Another jumped onto his shoulder and bit his ear. Levine yelled, and stood up. The compys hopped onto the ground and scampered away.
“Damn it!” he said.
Eddie drove up on the motorcycle. “That’s enough,” he said. “Get on the damn bike. We’re getting out of here.”
Nest
The red Jeep Wrangler came to a stop. Directly ahead, the game trail they had been following continued through the foliage, to a clearing beyond. The game trail was wide and muddy, trampled flat by large animals. They could see large, deep footprints in the mud.
From the clearing, they heard a low honking noise, like the sound of very large geese. Dodgson said, “Okay. Give me the box.”
King didn’t answer.
Baselton said, “What box?”
Without taking his eyes off the clearing, Dodgson said, “There’s a black box on the seat beside you, and a battery pack. Give them to me.”
Baselton grunted. “It’s heavy.”
“That’s because of the cone magnets.” Dodgson reached back, took the box, which was made of black anodized metal. It was the size of a shoebox, except it ended in a flaring cone. Underneath was mounted a pistol grip. Dodgson clipped a battery pack to his belt, and plugged it into the box. Then he picked the box up by the pistol grip. There was a knob at the back, facing him, and a graduated dial.
Dodgson said, “Batteries charged?”
“They’re charged,” King said.
“Okay,” Dodgson said. “I’ll go first, into the nest area. I’ll adjust the box, and get rid of the animals. You two follow behind me, and once the animals are gone, you each take an egg from the nest. Then you leave, and bring them back to the car. I’ll come back last. Then we all drive off. Got it?”
“Right,” Baselton said.
“Okay,” King said. “What kind of dinosaurs are these?”
“I have no fucking idea,” Dodgson said, climbing out of the car. “And it doesn’t make any difference. Just follow the procedure.” He closed the door softly.
The others got out quietly, and they started forward, down the wet trail. Their feet squished in the mud. The sound from the clearing continued. To Dodgson, it sounded like a lot of animals.
He pushed aside the last of the ferns and saw them.
It was a large nesting site, with perhaps four or five low earthen mounds, covered in grasses. The mounds were about seven feet wide, and three feet deep. There were twenty beige-colored adults around the mounds—a whole herd of dinosaurs, surrounding the nesting site. And the adults were big, thirty feet long and ten feet high, all honking and snorting.
“Oh, my God,” Baselton said, staring.
Dodgson shook his head. “They’re maiasaurs,” he whispered. “This is going to be a piece of cake.”
Maiasaurs had been named by paleontologist Jack Horner. Before Horner, scientists assumed that dinosaurs abandoned their eggs, as most reptiles did. Those assumptions fitted the old picture of dinosaurs as cold-blooded, reptilian creatures. Like reptiles, they were thought to be solitary; murals on museum walls rarely showed more than one example from each species—a brontosaurus here, a stegosaurus or a triceratops there, wading through the swamps. But Horner’s excavations in the badlands of Montana provided clear, unambiguous evidence that at least one species of hadrosaurs had engaged in complex nesting and parenting behavior. Horner incorporated that behavior in the name he gave these creatures: maiasaur meant “good-mother lizard.”
Watching them now, Dodgson could see the maiasaurs were indeed attentive parents, the big adults circling the nests, moving carefully to step outside the shallow earthen mounds. The beige maiasaurs were duck-billed dinosaurs; they had large heads that ended in a broad, flattened snout, rather like the bill of a duck.
They were taking mouthfuls of grass, and dropping it on the eggs in the mounds. This was, he knew, a way to regulate the temperature of the eggs. If the huge animals sat on the eggs, they would crush them. So instead they put a layer of grass over the eggs, which trapped heat and kept the eggs at a more constant temperature. The animals worked steadily.
“They’re huge,” Baselton said.
“They’re nothing but oversized cows,” Dodgson said. Although the maiasaurs were large, they were plant-eaters, and they had the docile, slightly stupid manner of cows. “Ready? Here we go.”
He lifted the box like a gun, and stepped forward, into view.
Dodgson expected a big reaction when the maiasaurs saw him, but there was none at all. They hardly seemed to notice him. One or two adults looked over, stared with dumb eyes, and then looked away. The animals continued to drop grass on the eggs, which were pale white, spherical, and nearly two feet long. Each was about twice the size of an ostrich egg. About the size of a small beach ball. No animals had hatched yet.
King and Baselton stepped out, and stood beside him in the clearing. Still the maiasaurs ignored them.
“Amazing,” Baselton said.
“Fine for us,” Dodgson said. And he turned on the box.
A continuous, high-pitched shriek filled the clearing. The maiasaurs immediately turned toward the sound, honking and lifting their heads. They seemed agitated, confused. Dodgson twisted the dial, and the shriek became higher, ear-splitting.
The maiasaurs bobbed their heads, and moved away from the painful sound. They clustered at the far end of the clearing. Several of the animals urinated in alarm. A few of them moved away into the foliage, abandoning the nest. They were agitated, but they stayed away.
“Go now,” Dodgson said.
King stepped into the nearest nest, and grunted as he picked up an egg. His arms hardly reached around the huge sphere. The maiasaurs honked at him, but none of the adults moved forward. Then Baselton went into the nest, took an egg, and followed King back to the car.
Dodgson walked backward, holding the box on the adults. At the edge of the clearing, he turned the sound off.
At once the maiasaurs came back, honking loudly and repeatedly. But as they returned to the nests, it seemed as if the adults forgot what had just happened. Within a few moments, they ceased honking, and went back to dropping grass over the eggs. They ignored Dodgson as he left and headed back along the game trail.
Stupid animals, Dodgson thought, as he went to the car. Baselton and King were setting the eggs into big Styrofoam containers in the back, and fitting the foam packing around them carefully. Both men were grinning like kids.
“That was amazing!”
“Great! Fantastic!”
“What’d I tell you?” Dodgson said. “Nothing to it.” He glanced at his watch. “At this rate, we’ll finish in less than four hours.”
He climbed behind the steering wheel and turned on the engine. Baselton got into the back seat. King got in the passenger seat and took out the map.
“Next,” Dodgson said.
The High Hide
“I tell you, it’s fine,” Levine said irritably. He was sweating in the stifling heat beneath the aluminum roof of the high hide. “Look, it didn’t even break the skin.” He held out his hand. There was a red semicircle where the compy had pressed its teeth into the skin, but that was all.
Beside him, Eddie said, “Yeah, well, your ear is bleeding a little.”
“I don’t feel anything. It can’t be bad.”
“No, it’s not bad, “ Eddie said, opening the first-aid kit. “But I better clean it up.”
“I prefer,” Levine said, “to get on with my observations.” The dinosaurs were barely a quarter-mile away from him, and he could see them well. In the still midday air, he could hear them breathe.
He could hear them breathe.
Or at least he could, if this young man would leave him alone. “Look,” Levine said, “I know what I’m doing here. You came in at
the end of a very interesting and successful experiment. I actually called the dinosaurs to me, by imitating their cry.”
“You did?” Eddie said.
“Yes, I did. That was what led them into the forest in the first place. So I hardly think that I need your assistance—”
“The thing is,” Eddie said, “you got some of that dino shit on your ear and there’s a couple of little punctures. I’ll just clean it off for you.” He soaked a gauze pad with disinfectant. “May sting a little.”
“I don’t care, I have other—Ow!”
“Stop moving,” Eddie said. “It’ll only take a second.”
“It’s absolutely unnecessary.”
“If you just stand still, it’ll be done. There.” He took the gauze away. Levine saw brown and a faint streak of red. Just as he suspected, the injury was trivial. He reached up and touched his ear. It didn’t hurt at all.
Levine squinted out at the plain, as Eddie packed up the first-aid case.
“Jeez, it’s hot up here,” Eddie said.
“Yes,” Levine said, shrugging.
“Sarah Harding arrived, and I think they took her back to the trailer. You want to go back now?”
“I can’t imagine why,” Levine said.
“I just thought you might want to say hello or something,” Eddie said.
“My work is here,” Levine said. He turned away, raised his binoculars to his eyes.
“So,” Eddie said. “You don’t want to come back?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Levine said, staring through binoculars. “Not in a million years. Not in sixty-five million years.”
Trailer
Kelly Curtis listened to the sound of the shower. She couldn’t believe it. She stared at the muddy clothes tossed casually on the bed. Shorts and a khaki short-sleeve shirt.
Sarah Harding’s actual clothes.
She couldn’t help it. Kelly reached out and touched them. She noticed how the fabric was worn and frayed. Buttons sewn back on; they didn’t match. And there were some reddish streaks near the pocket that she thought must be old bloodstains. She reached down and touched the fabric—
“Kelly?”
Sarah was calling to her, from the shower.
She remembered my name.
“Yes?” Kelly said, her voice betraying her nervousness.
“Is there any shampoo?”
“I’ll look, Dr. Harding,” Kelly said, opening drawers hastily. The men had all gone into the next compartment, leaving her alone with Sarah while she washed. Kelly searched desperately, opening the drawers, slamming them shut again.