Anonymous Rex (38 page)

“No,” I respond. “I think I’m sticking around for this one.”

I motion across the lab, toward the largest indoor water tank I’ve ever laid eyes on, bar none. Sea World has nothing on Dr. Emil Vallardo, M.D., Ph.D., OB-GYN. Glass-walled, over thirty feet high, its length and breadth encompassing a full half of this massive corporate-funded
laboratory, they could dump the Indian Ocean into this thing and still have room for Lolita, the Killer Whale. But there is no Lolita in this tank. There are no fish lollygagging around in there, either, nothing to amuse the kiddies while the parents are getting toasted over at Busch Gardens.

There is only an egg in this artificial womb, a single, solitary egg, maybe a twenty-pounder, floating a few feet below the surface, suspended in the water by a mesh hammock. Brown and gray speckles dot its otherwise albino shell, each one leading to an electrode, a wire, terminating at a computer set up just outside the splash zone. Life signs flit across an enlarged CRT attached to the side of the tank, heart and brain functions beeping steadily.

There are cracks in the shell. Three of them, from my vantage point. I suspect there are more on the other side. Something wants out.

“When were you gonna tell me this part?” I ask Jaycee, knowing the answer is never.

“I … I couldn’t,” she admits, turning to Vallardo and Judith for support. “We … the three of us … we made the decision not to say anything.”

“
We
didn’t decide anything,” Judith says caustically. “You decided, Jaycee.”

“I did what I had to do,” counters the Coleo, her claws snapping out, flicking into place.

“Before we start the floor show and you two go at it,” I announce, “I’d like to get us all out in the open, okay? Anyone who needs to take off their guise, let’s do so now.” There’s no reaction; they all stare at me as if I am speaking in tongues. Vallardo and Jaycee have shed their costumes a while ago; only Judith McBride remains in human form. I am not surprised.

“Here,” I say, “I’ll start you off, how’s that?” Whipping off the rest of my remaining clothing with a stripper’s panache, I casually unsnap my girdles and loosen my trusses, exposing the full length of my natural body. My claws click through the air, my tail swishes with contentment, and I roar my terrible roar and gnash my terrible teeth all for the fun of it.

“Now,” I say, “hands up everyone who’s a dino.” I raise my own arm,
just to get the tide moving. Soon, the three others have tentatively put their hands in the air.

I approach Judith McBride, her left cheek having taken on a delightfully humorous muscle spasm, and place my arm over hers, weighting it back down. “Come now, Mrs. McBride. Are you that confused as to your own identity?”

“I—I don’t know what you mean,” she stammers. “I’m a Carnotaur, you know that. You’ve heard the stories, you’ve seen the pictures.”

“That’s true, that’s true,” I say, making a big show of nodding, pacing around her body in an ever-tightening spiral. Ah, if I only had my hat, my trench coat. I spy a white lab coat hanging on a nearby hook, and ask Vallardo if I could borrow it for a minute. He’s too confused to argue, so I slip into the long overcoat, feeling the comfortable weight upon my shoulders.

“I have seen the pictures, Mrs. McBride, of both you and your deceased husband. And you did make a fine Carnotaur couple. And yes, I’ve heard the stories. The rumors. The tales of Carnotaur Raymond McBride and his illustrious circle of dino friends. Entertainers, businessmen, heads of state. Very posh.”

Jaycee’s turn to interrupt. “Vincent, really, I don’t think this is the time—”

“But I gotta tell you, I’ve had some injuries over the years, and I can’t trust all my senses like I used to. I don’t place too much stock in my ears, for example, ever since this little hunting trip I took with a band of humans ’round ’bout ten years ago. Gun-happy bastards were using heavy-gauge ammo on ten-point bucks, discharging those puppies right by my head. Three days and god knows how many shots later, boom, I’ve all but lost the high end of my hearing register. So you say I’ve heard the stories, yeah, I’ve heard ’em, but it doesn’t mean I can
trust
what I’ve heard.

“My eyes? Forget about it. I was driving around with uncorrected vision for a while before I got wise and had my peepers checked, and lemme tell you that half the time I didn’t know whether I was sitting at a red light or watching a really boring laser show. I’ve got Coke-bottle contact lenses, my vision is so bad. So those pictures I saw of you and Raymond all dressed up nice like the Carnotaurs you claim to be, hey, maybe I didn’t see ’em like I should have seen ’em. I can’t
trust
what I’ve seen.

“Taste? Don’t get me started. I love spicy foods, it’s a habit, but it knocks out my buds. After ten years of Aunt Marge’s jambalaya, well … can’t trust it any more. Touch? Well, you and I haven’t gotten that close. But even so, there’s saline in this world, there’s silicone, there’s this polyfiber we all know and love, so I can’t trust my touch either, can I? So there’s really only the one sense left to me, and as a result I’ve got to trust it above all else. I’m sure you understand that.

“My nose is my livelihood, Mrs. McBride, and a true dino never, ever forgets a scent. You can’t fake it, though as you know, you sure can try. You can try real hard. But in the end …”

Ignoring her protests and pleas, her arms slapping me in the throat, in the face, I grab Judith McBride in a rough headlock and, with my free hand, reach behind her head, into the thick nest of hair just above the back of her neck. I quickly and easily find the device I’m looking for, secured to her scalp with a familiar epoxy glue, and rip it free. She shrieks in pain.

The pouch is filled with chlorine powder, with dried rose petals, with orange peels, the mixture emitting jets of manufactured dino odor via a steady electric current supplied by thin copper wires leading from a small lighter battery into the pouch itself.

Waving the odiferous cushion beneath her nose, holding it as if it contained a ripe, steaming turd, I growl, “This is your scent, the chemicals inside this pouch, and this is the only thing that ever made you remotely resemble one of us. I got a feeling that your husband was the same way, right, Mrs. McBride?

“You’re no dino,” I say, distaste swelling, puckering my mouth. “You’re … you’re nothing but a common human.”

Enter the dramatic music, reprise.

My domination is total; Judith is unable to answer me, her mouth opening and closing, opening and closing. Her eyelids flutter uncontrollably. Goddamn human, I should kill her right now, out of not only duty but sheer principle alone. Lying to me like that, sending me back and forth across the country.

But Vallardo cuts us all off with a sharp gasp that commands attention from dinos and dino-fakers alike. “The egg,” he whispers reverently. “It’s time.”

As one, our gazes pan across the laboratory, stopping on the lone inhabitant of that wide-open tank. The few cracks I could make out
before have spiderwebbed, fanning the full surface of the egg, new splinters forming every second. As Vallardo taps a few commands into the tank’s computer, an external speaker buzzes on, amplifying those sounds bouncing around within the watery confines. A creaking, a crackling, and … could that be a wail?

“Come on, baby,” murmurs Jaycee. “You can do it. Break out for Mama.”

R
ushing awkwardly to the side of the tank, Vallardo grabs hold of a series of pulleys, twisting the ropes down and around an anchor set into the floor. The left side of the egg’s hammock lifts a little in the water, but now needs to be counterbalanced by a lift to the right. “The other side!” Vallardo yells across the room, and I do believe he’s talking to me! I didn’t come here to assist in a birth, but I guess if I have to do a little midwifery in the middle of my crime-solving, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

“Now what?” I ask upon reaching the ropes. My angle into the tank is sharper, more acute, the water blurring the egg into a long ovoid blob. But I can still hear those splinters over the PA, so I know there’s activity going on inside that shell.

“On the count of three,” Vallardo yells to me, “pull down to the yellow markings on the rope!” I glance up—the band color shifts to a tawny tone ten feet away—and shout back that I’m ready. Vallardo gives the count, and we hoist.

It comes up easier than I expected, my muscles having primed themselves for heavier exertion. My extra effort forces the right end of the hammock higher than the left, and the egg begins to slide—

“No!” screams Jaycee, launching herself at the ropes, at Vallardo.

Jaycee’s added weight quickly hoists her end higher, which forces
me to compensate in turn, and for a moment we are the Three Stooges meeting the Mad Scientist, wildly tugging on our ropes in an effort to stabilize the as-yet-unborn creature rolling around on that hammock.

“Careful,” Vallardo warns, as if we didn’t already know. “Don’t let it slip!”

Jaycee anchors her rope and storms up to me, landing a good slap across my cheek. “You did that on purpose,” she says. “You want it dead.”

I say, “I want no such thing. The only thing I want is to bring Mrs. McBride in front of the National Council, let them decide how they want to handle her. I’m amazed you didn’t kill her already.”

“She almost did,” says Judith. “But we came to a little arrangement, instead.”

We turn to face the human interloper, and find that Judith has a gun. I knew she would; the bad ones always do. But I didn’t expect a gun so … large. The monstrous revolver sags in her hand, her frail human wrist trembling with the effort to keep it upright. Judith uses the barrel to motion me away from the tank, and Jaycee and Vallardo reluctantly follow.

“The egg …” says the doctor. “We have to keep watch on it.”

“I’ll watch the egg,” spits Judith. “It’s my child, I can take care of it.”

Jaycee snaps, a sudden burst of hatred propelling her across the room, tail whipping through the air, teeth bared; as the blur streaks by so fast, all I can see is a brown streak of anger rushing by my face. Everything sinks into slow-motion replay, though without the color commentary: Judith’s own reflexes burst into action, bringing up that revolver, the barrel the size of a Hula-Hoop, round, clearly chambered and ready to sear into flesh—my lungs paralyzed, refusing to deliver a breath so I can scream out the perfunctory No!—Vallardo throwing himself in front of the tank, ready to take a bullet, an arrow, a warhead, anything to protect the integrity of its structure—Judith’s finger squeezing hard on the trigger, her lips tightening into a satisfied grimace—

And another blur, this one quite unexpected, as a vaguely Hadrosaur-shaped creature crashes through the laboratory door and
into the easy target of Judith McBride. The gun reports, blasting its echo through my already-damaged ears.

Concrete chips fly out of the wall behind me, spraying sharp white shrapnel through the air. A shard imbeds itself in my tail. It is excruciating. I pay it no mind.

Glenda lifts herself off the ground, kicking Judith’s gun into a far corner of the lab, her leg slamming into Mrs. McBride’s rib cage. The human expels a gush of air and curls into a fetal ball.

“The hell’s she got a gun for?” a bloodied Glenda says, turning to me. I shrug. Glenda whips back around to Judith, bends down, and grabs her cheeks, pulling the widow close. “The hell you got a gun for?”

Judith’s best response is nothing more than a groan of pain.

“Glenda, you—you’re okay.”

“I’m hurtin’, but I’m alive, yeah. Mean little apefuckers you got in them cages, Doc.”

Vallardo’s expression is constant; he’s hard to read. “How’s the egg, Doc?”

“It’s stable,” he says. “There is some time left.” “Then I’m gonna pick up where we left off. Anybody stop me if you get confused.”

Ensuring that my lab/trench coat is buckled tight around my waist, I strut over to Jaycee and place an arm around her shoulder. “It must get tiring making things up all the time,” I say. “Lying takes a lot out of you.”

She tries to cut in with a “Vincent, I—” but as promised, I pay her no mind, running roughshod over her words. “Don’t bother,” I say. “I’m gonna tell it like it is, and even if you’ve heard it all before, don’t stop me.

“Most of what you told me was true,” I begin, keeping my comments directed toward my onetime (but five sessions!) lover. “You just left out a few key elements. Yes, Judith McBride had an affair with Donovan, and yes, you offered to impersonate a human in order to entrap Raymond for the Council. You probably even fell in lust with him, just like you said, and that’s all fine and good.

“I’ll tell you, I got into this case purely by accident, you know that? I was hired by the insurance company that was supposed to reimburse
Donovan Burke for the fire at his Evolution Club. I had no idea it would lead to this, honestly, I didn’t. And things were fishy there right from the start—fire trucks that were called before any of the witnesses actually saw the flames. Almost as if it was supposed to be a controlled fire, wiping out a section of the building without torching the entire place.” I pause here, waiting for input from the accomplices.