Tyrannosaur Canyon (43 page)

"That's the right attitude, Melodic." Peale cleared his throat, delicately. "The committee did feel that the hypothesis that this, ah, Venus particle might be an alien microbe is perhaps a bit premature."

"That doesn't surprise me, Cushman." Melodic paused, finding it difficult to say his first name. Better get used to it, she thought. The deferential, eager-to-please Technician First Grade was history. "Any major scientific advance involves going out on a limb. I'm confident the hypothesis will stand up."

"Delighted to hear it. Of course, I'm only a museum president"-and here he gave a self-deprecating chuckle-"so I'm hardly in a position to judge your work. They tell me it's quite good."

Melodic smiled pleasantly.

He leaned back, placed his hands on his knees, flexed them. "I had a talk with the Committee on Science and it seems we'd like to offer you a position as Assistant Curator in the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology. This is a fine, tenure-track position which will lead, in time, if all goes well, to an appointment to the Humboldt Chair, which might have been occupied by the late Dr. Corvus had he lived. Naturally there will be a commensurate increase in salary."

Melodic allowed an uncomfortable amount of time to pass before responding. "That's a generous offer," she said. "I appreciate it."

"We take care of our own," said the president pompously.

"I wish I could accept it."

Peale's hands came apart. Melodic waited.

"You're turning us down, Melodic?" Peale looked incredulous, as if the idea of not wanting to stay at the museum was preposterous, unthinkable.

Melodic kept her voice even. "Cushman, I spent five years in the basement doing first-class work for this museum. Never once did I receive one iota of recognition. Never once was I thanked beyond a perfunctory pat on the back. My salary was less than the maintenance workers who emptied my trash."

"Of course we noticed you . . ." Peale was nonplussed. "And things will change. Let me say our offer to you isn't engraved in stone, either. Perhaps we need to take it back to the Committee on Science and see if there isn't something more we can do for you. An associate curatorship with tenure might even be possible."

"I already turned down a tenured position at Harvard."

Peak's brows shot up in perfect astonishment, quickly concealed. "My, they're quick on the draw." He managed a strained chuckle. "What sort of offer? If I may ask."

"The Montcrieff Chair." She tried to keep from grinning. Damn, she was enjoying this.

"The Montcrieff Chair? Well, now that's . . . quite extraordinary." He cleared his throat, eased back in his chair, gave his tie a quick adjustment. "And you turned it down?"

"Yes. I'm going with trie dinosaur ... to the Smithsonian." "The Smithsonian?" At the mention of the name of their big rival, his face reddened.

"That's right. To the
National
Museum
of Natural History. The government plans to build a special Biosafety Level four laboratory in the
White
Sands
Missile
Range
in
New Mexico
to study the dinosaur and the Venus particles. They've asked me to be the assistant director in charge of research, which comes with a tenured curatorial appointment at the national museum. Being able to continue my work on the specimen means a lot to me. The mystery of the Venus particles has yet to be cracked; I want to be the one to do it." "That's your final decision?" "Yes."

Peak rose, extended his hand, and mustered a weak smile. "In that case, Dr. Crookshank, allow me to be the first to congratulate you."

Breeding had produced one fine quality in Peak, thought Melodie: he was a good loser.

7

THE HOUSE, A small bungalow, sat on a pleasant side lane in the town of Marfa,
Texas
. A large sycamore tree cast a mottled pool of shade across the lawn, enclosed by a white picket fence. A 1989 Ford Fiesta was parked in the driveway, and a hand-painted sign that read STUDIO hung outside a converted garage.

Tom and Sally parked on the street and rang the doorbell.

"In here," a voice called from the garage.

They walked around and the garage door came up, revealing a pleasant art studio inside. A woman appeared wearing an oversized man's dress shirt flecked with paint, her red hair tied up in a cloth. She was short, brisk, and attractive, with a small upturned nose, boyish face, and a pugnacious air. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm Tom Broadbent. This is my wife, Sally."

She broke into a smile. "Right. Robbie Weathers. Thanks so much for coming."

They followed her into a surprisingly pleasant studio with a clerestory. The walls were white and hung with landscape paintings. Odd rocks, weathered pieces of wood, old bones, and rusty pieces of iron were arranged like sculpture on tables against the far wall.

"Have a seat. Tea? Coffee?"

"No thanks."

They sat on a futon folded up to be a couch, while Robbie Weathers washed her hands and pulled off her head scarf, shaking out her curly hair. She pulled up a wooden chair and sat opposite them. The sun streamed in. There was an awkward silence.

"So," she said, looking at Tom, "you're the person who found my father."

"That's right."

"I want you to tell me all about it, how you found my father, what he said
          

everything."

Tom began to tell the story, relating to her how he heard the shots, rode to investigate, found her father dying on the canyon floor.

She nodded, her face clouding. "How had he ... fallen?"

"On his face. He'd been shot several times in the back. I turned him over, gave him CPR, and his eyes opened."

"Might he have lived if they'd gotten him out in time?"

"The wounds were fatal. He didn't have a chance."

"I see." Her knuckles hid whitened where her hand gripped the side of the chair.

"He was clutching a notebook in his hand. He told me to take it and give it to

„ you.

"What were his exact words?"

"He said, It's for Robbie. . . My daughter. . . Promise to give it to her. . . She'll know how to find the. . . treasure ..."

"Treasure," repeated Robbie, with a faint smile. "That's how he used to talk about his fossils. He never used the word 'fossil,' because he was paranoid about someone jumping his claims. Instead he used to pose as a half-crazed treasure hunter. He often carried around a conspicuously fake treasure map, to mislead people into thinking he was a quack."

"That explains one thing I long wondered about. Anyway, I accepted the notebook from him. He was . . . close to death. I did what I could but he didn't have a chance. His only concern was for you."

Robbie swiped a tear out of her eye.

"He said, 'It's for her. . . Robbie. Give it to her. . . No one else. . . No one, especially not the police. . . You must. . . promise me. 'And then he said, 'Tell her I love her.

"He really said that?"

"Yes." He didn't add that he hadn't managed to say the last word-death had come too quickly.

"And then?"

"Those were his last words. His heart stopped and he died."

She nodded, bowing her head.

Torn pulled the notebook from his pocket and offered it to her. She raised her head, wiped away her eyes, and took it.

"Thank you."

She turned to the back, flipped through the blank pages, stopped at the two exclamation points, smiled through her tears.

"I do know this: from the time he found that dinosaur to when he was murdered, he was certainly the happiest man on earth."

She slowly closed the book and looked out the window into the sun-drenched South Texas landscape, and spoke slowly. "Mom left us when I was four. Who could blame her, married to a guy who dragged us all over the West, from
Montana
to
Texas
and every state in between? He was always looking for the big one. When I got older he wanted me to go with him, for us to be a team but... I didn't want any part of it. I didn't want to go camping in the desert and hunting around for fossils. All I wanted was to stay in one place and have a friend that would last me more than six months. I blamed the dinosaurs. I hated dinosaurs."

She took out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes again, folded it up in her lap.

"I couldn't wait to get away to college. Had to work my way through-Dad never had two nickels to rub together. We had a falling out. And then he called a year ago, saying he was on the trail of the big one, the dinosaur to end all dinosaurs, and that he would find it for me. I'd heard that one before. I got mad. I said some things to him I shouldn't have, and now I'll never have the chance to take them back."

The room filled with light and afternoon silence.

"I wish like hell he were still here," she added softly, and fell silent.

"He wrote you something," said Tom, removing the packet. "We found them buried in a tin can in the sand near the dinosaur."

She took them with trembling hands. "Thank you."

Sally said, "The Smithsonian's having an unveiling of the dinosaur in a new lab custom-built for it out in
New Mexico
. They're going to christen it. Would you like to come? Tom and I are going."

"Well... I'm not sure."

"I think you should . . . They're naming it after you."

Robbie looked up sharply. "What?"

"That's right," said Sally. "The Smithsonian wanted to name it after your father but Tom persuaded them that your dad intended to name it 'Robbie,' after you. And besides, it's a female T. Rex-they say the females were bigger and more ferocious than the males."

Robbie smiled. "He would have named it after me, whether I liked it or not."

"Well?" Tom asked. "Do you like it?"

There was a silence and then Robbie finally smiled. "Yeah. I guess I do.”

EPILOGUE

JORNADA DEL MUERTO

In four hours, the darkness was complete. She crouched in her wallow, eyes half-closed. The only light came from ribbons of fire burning here and there in the cypresses. The swamp had filled with dinosaurs and small mammals, swimming, thrashing, floating, crazed with fear, many dying and drowning.

She awoke, fed easily and well.

The air became hotter. When she breathed it hurt her lungs, and she coughed in pain. She rose from the water to fight the tormenting heat, ripping and tearing at the air with her jaws.

The heat increased. The darkness increased.

She moved to deeper, cooler water. Dead and dying meat floated around her, but she ignored it.

A black, sooty rain began to fall, coating her back with a tarlike sludge. The air became thick with haze. She saw a red light through the trees. A huge wildfire was sweeping the highlands. She watched it move, exploding through the crowns of the great trees, sending down showers of sparks and burning branches.

The fire passed, missing the swampy enclave where she had taken refuge. The superheated air cooled slightly. She remained in the water, surrounded by bloated, rotting death. Days passed. The darkness became absolute. She weakened and began to die.

Death was a new feeling for her, unlike any she had experienced before. She could feel it working inside her. She could feel its insidious, silent assault on her organs. The fine, downy coat of small feathers that covered her body sloughed off. She could barely move. She panted harder now and yet could not satisfy her hunger for oxygen. Her eyes had been scorched by the heat and they clouded and swelled shut.

Dying took days. Her instincts fought it, resisted every moment of it. Day after day, the pain grew. She bit and kicked at her sides, tearing her own flesh, trying to reach the enemy within. As the pain rose, her fury increased. She struggled blindly toward land, heavy on her feet. Freed of the buoying force of water, she staggered and fell in the shallows. There she bellowed, thrashed, kicking and biting the mud, tearing in a fury at the earth itself. Her lungs began to fill with fluid as her heart strained to pump the blood through her body.

The hot, black rain fell.

The biological program that had carried her through forty years of life faltered. The dying neurons fired in one last orgiastic blaze of futile activity. There were no more answers, no programming, no solution for the ultimate crisis. Her fruitless bellowing strangled itself in a shudder of wet, groaning flesh. The left hemisphere of her brain crashed in a storm of electrical impulses, her right leg jerking a dozen savage epileptic kicks before falling into a rigid clonus, the claws flexing open, the tendons popping from the bones. Her jaws opened and snapped shut, opened wide and locked in that position, fiercely agape.

A shudder traveled the length of her tail, vibrating it against the ground until only the tip trembled-and then all neural activity ceased.

The program had run its last line. The black rain continued to fall. Gradually, she became coated with slurry. The water rose, pushed by great storms in the mountains, and within a day she had been buried in thick, sterile mud.

Her sixty-five-million-year entombment had begun.