Rude Astronauts (34 page)

Chambliss dubiously massaged his chin between his fingers. “Kind of hard on the cows, though, isn’t it?” he asked, but Cooper didn’t seem to hear him. Denny was about to add his own comeback when one of the researchers spoke up from the camera array.

“Movement on the treeline,” she snapped, peering through binoculars at the far side of the clearing. “Three-thirteen degrees northeast and … okay, they’re out of the trees.”

“What type of approach?” Cooper asked, leaning on the back of Andy’s chair to watch the computers.

“Walking,” Andy replied. “They’re bunched together, standard triangle formation.” Three blue dots were diagrammed on DinoRAM’s screen; he opened a window in the corner of the display and studied a graph. “Seventy-three-point-three percent probability that Freddie’s in the lead. Lauren?”

The young woman who had made the sighting chuckled. “Good call. Freddie’s still leader of the pack. Guess he won another argument with Jason.”

Raising the binoculars to his eyes, Denny watched the prairie. At first he couldn’t see the pack. Then they moved, and he could make out three sleek, man-sized shapes at the edge of the trees. “Damn, but they’re small,” he murmured aloud.

“You were expecting Godzilla?” Gerhardt whispered back. But he nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Cute little fuckers, aren’t they?”

Suddenly, the three deinonychi began to sprint forward, running through the high grass towards the cow. “Here they come,” Lauren said as the team members operating the camcorders tracked to follow them. “They’re beginning to spread out …”

“Three-prong attack,” Andy murmured, watching his screens. “Michael’s heading southwest, Jason’s cutting off the southwest, and Fred’s going straight in for the kill.”

Steinberg’s mouth dropped open. “Jesus!” he said aloud. “You mean they’re organized?”

“They’re not dumb animals,” Tiffany said quietly.

Suddenly the deinonychus to the far right changed course, veered in closer to the cow. “Hey!” Andy cried out. “Mikey’s going for it! He’s going to get that cow first!”

“Keep your voice down,” Cooper said calmly. He studied the action through his own field glasses. “Jack, Jeff, keep a camera on Michael but make sure you follow Freddie and Jason. Don’t let any of them out of your sight.” The grad students behind the camcorders swiveled their instruments to keep all the dinosaurs in their viewfinders.

Now Steinberg could clearly see the deinonychus pack: each was about six feet tall, with light brown skin mottled with dark red tiger stripes, running erect on muscular hind legs, slender forearms tucked in close to their chests. They were somehow smaller than he had expected, but their very weirdness somehow made them look much larger, even from the distance. Although each had a total length of eleven feet, they only stood six feet high; the rest was a long, sinewy tail which lashed about high in the air. He had read that they didn’t weigh very much either: an average of 150 pounds, which accounted for their ability to stride across the floating ground without sinking.

In fact, they could have been mistaken as being harmless mini-dinosaurs—surely not as formidable as the ruling carnivorous dinosaurs of their time like the allosaurus or the albertosaurus—were it not for their heads: long and wedge-shaped, with wide, wild eyes under bony ridges and massive jaws which seemed perpetually frozen in a demonic grin, exposing razor-sharp teeth. One look at that face, and all notions of cuteness disappeared: they were creatures which nature had designed to be killers.

Strangely, they somehow seemed more avian than reptilian. Of course they would, he reminded himself. They’re ancestors to birds, aren’t they? Yet knowledge of that clinical fact didn’t help to shake his unease. They were too goddamn alien …

By now the pack was close enough that they could be seen without the aid of binoculars. The breeze shifted just then. It was either because of the wind shift, or because it heard the swift approach of its killers, that the cow looked up. Seeing Jason coming in from in front, the cow quickly turned and made a waddling effort to run in the opposite direction—only to find that route cut off by Michael and Freddie. Braying in terror, the heifer clumsily veered again and began to gallop toward the observation platform. “Oh shit, bossie, don’t come this way!” one of the camcorder operators hissed.

“Forget about the bait, Jack. Keep your camera on Michael and Freddie.” Cooper was intently watching the two deinonychi, who were practically running neck-and-neck now. “Well, now. Let’s see if they’d rather fight or feed.”

Freddie’s massive head suddenly twisted about on its long neck and, in apparent mid-stride, it snapped savagely at Michael. The shotgun-mike picked up the rasping sound of its teeth gnashing together. Daunted, the other deinonychus slowed abruptly and peeled off as Freddie continued to careen forward at full charge.

“Looks like a little bit of both,” Andy surmised.

“Did we get that?” Cooper asked Jack. The researcher, his eyes fixed on the viewfinder, gave him the OK sign with his thumb and forefinger. “Well, Freddie, first blood goes to you again,” Cooper added softly. He sounded like a dog owner proudly watching his golden retriever bring down a rabbit. Denny looked around at Tiffany to say something, but the naturalist had turned around and was looking in the other direction, away from the killing ground.

Steinberg looked back just in time to see Freddie take down the cow. He almost wished he hadn’t …

As it reached the fleeing cow, Freddie suddenly leaped into the air, vaulting the last few yards with its hindlegs stretched forward. The cow bellowed as Freddie’s sharp, curved talons ripped into the soft hide along its belly and ribs; hot red blood jetted from its side as the disemboweled animal, its stomach muscles sliced open, toppled to the ground. Its death scream, hoarse and terrified, was cut short as Freddie’s jaw closed around its neck and wrenched upwards to rip the cow’s head from its neck. In a swift movement, the dinosaur hurled the head aside, an unwanted bloody morsel which landed near the base of the platform.

“Oh! It’s a dunk shot for Fred!” Andy yelled.

“Sign the kid up for the Lakers,” Jack replied, shaking his head. “Damn.”

“Oh, my God,” Chambliss whispered. He had been watching everything through his field glasses; the binoculars fell from his hand and dangled against his chest. The senator was pale; his hand was covering his mouth. Steinberg himself forced down the urge to puke. Like Nixon, he looked away. Gerhardt continued to watch, but even he seemed to be fighting down revulsion.

Cooper seemed unmoved. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, that’s a wrap,” he said. As Jason and Michael moved in to wait their turns at the carcass, the researchers began unloading cartridges and discs from the recorders, jotting down notes on their pads, talking quietly among themselves. Steinberg watched Jack pull his wallet from his back pocket and hand a dollar bill to Andy; some sort of continuing wager was being settled for the day. Denny was sure that they had seen this kind of butchery dozens of times in the past several months, yet he doubted that he himself could ever get used to it.

The project leader turned to Pete Chambliss. “Well, Senator, now you’ve gotten a taste of what we do out here,” he said, once more assuming the aloof demeanor of a professional scientist. “Any questions?”

“No … no, not right now,” Chambliss said quietly. The senator seemed to be recovering his poise, but Steinberg had never seen his boss more at a loss for words. Chambliss glanced over his shoulder at Steinberg and Gerhardt. “I think we’ll be wanting to return to the base camp now, if you don’t mind,” he added stiffly. “We need to get ready for our trip tomorrow.”

Cooper nodded. “Certainly. Tiffany will escort you back. I’ll be seeing you around suppertime, all right?”

The three of them nodded their heads. Tiffany, still not looking at the grisly scene in the prairie, stepped past them to lead the way to the boardwalk steps. Denny fell into step behind Chambliss and Gerhardt—then stopped, feeling an eerie prickly sensation at his neck, as if someone were watching him.

He gazed back at the researchers. All were busy packing their gear, talking to each other, making notes. But beyond them, on the blood-drenched killing ground a hundred yards away at the edge of the safety zone, one of the dinosaurs was watching them leave. Jason’s opaque black eyes were focused on the platform.

Denny took another few steps towards the stairway. Jason’s huge head shifted to follow his progress. All at once, Steinberg realized that the deinonychus was watching him …

Watching him. Wondering how his blood tasted.

2. Off to See the Lizard

It was light that awoke him this time, a bright shaft of sunlight which hit his eyes as the passenger door of the Osprey was opened. When he awoke this time, he was lying on a stretcher which rested on the floor between the passenger seats. Someone—an older man with a balding forehead and wire-rim glasses—was holding his head steady between his hands, murmuring for him not to move, that he was suffering from a concussion. But he did move his head, just a little, and when he did he saw Tiffany being helped into the aircraft.

She was muddy and soaked; below her shorts her legs were torn with cuts, and her hair was matted with dirt. She looked at him with astonishment as she was guided into a seat just in front of him. “Denny,” she breathed. “You got out … thank God, you got out of there …”

He wanted to say something of the same kind, but instead his eyes drifted from her face to her waist. She was still wearing a gronker on her belt, a yellow plastic box just like his own …

His right hand moved, almost involuntarily, to his own belt, and there it was, the inhibitor which should have protected him, yet didn’t. A vague memory stirred in his mind; he bent his neck a little to look down at the unit clasped within his hand. The red status light was still on. He wasn’t looking for that. Something on the edge of his memory …

He turned the little box over in his hand. There, on the side of the case: a strip of white tape, marked with a name: NIXON.

“Don’t move your head,” the man sitting above him said soothingly. “Just take it easy. We’ll get you back in a few minutes.”

Someone shut the passenger door and told the police to take it up again. The Osprey’s engines picked up speed; there was a weightless bobbing sensation as the VTOL began to ascend. He laid his head back down, feeling the darkness beginning to come once again—but an unformed thought nagged at him through the fog and the pain. His eyes wandered to Tiffany Nixon.

Someone else was peering at the cuts on her legs, but he could see over his shoulder the gronker on her belt. “Here, move a little to your left,” she was told. She put her weight on her left thigh and moved so that a deep cut above her knee could be examined, and when she did, Denny saw the white strip of tape on her unit.

STEINBERG. Isn’t that weird? She’s got my gronker. I’ve got hers. STEINBERG … NIXON … STEINBERG … NIXON …

“Don’t worry,” he croaked. “They all work the same.”

Tiffany looked down at him then. Her eyes moved first to his gronker, then to her own. Their eyes met and in that briefest of instants just before he passed out again, he realized what had happened down there. …

From the testimony of Marie Weir; President, WTE Cybernetics Corp.:

SEN. ANTHONY HOFFMANN, D-CA: As you’re aware, the Commission would like to know of the details of the reflex inhibitors WTE designed for the project … that is, the so-called gronkers …

WEIR: Yes, Senator, I understand the importance of this Commission knowing these things. But on advice of our legal counsel, however, I need to inform you that this is proprietary information which, if made public, could be of great benefit to our competitors, so WTE’s stance is that we’re reluctant to divulge the …

KAPLAN: Ms. Weir, I appreciate your reluctance, but you have to remember that you’re under federal subpoena to testify to this Commission. Failure to relinquish information which the Commission deems as useful for its investigation could be punishable by you and your company being cited for contempt.

WEIR: My attorney informs me that we can give you general information about our product in this hearing and divulge further information in executive session. I believe this is a fair compromise.

KAPLAN: The chair recognizes Senator Hoffmann.

SEN. HOFFMANN: Ma’am, the only compromise I’m interested in hearing about is whether the inhibitors you built could have compromised the lives of my late colleague and his party. If we have to put you under arrest to get that information, I’ll gladly second the motion.

WEIR: Senator, I resent what you’re implying. The inhibitors we built for the project were designed according to the University of Colorado research team’s own specifications, no more and no less. They were subjected to rigorous field-testing before they were put into actual use, and once they were in operation we monitored their progress. Up until the incident of question, no failures were reported of our equipment. Not one. If you’re searching for a smoking gun, I suggest you look elsewhere.

SEN. HOFFMANN: I’ve studied the report which WTE submitted to the Committee and on the face of it, at least, I have to agree. Under normal circumstances the inhibitors did perform according to the desired standard. I have no wish to start a fight with you on this point. The main question which I have, if your attorney doesn’t mind, is whether the gronkers could have been tampered with in such a way to cause their failure.

WEIR: My attorney advises me …

SEN. HOFFMANN: The heck with your attorney, Ms. Weir. Just answer a simple damn question for me. Could the inhibitors have been sabotaged in advance? Yes or no?

WEIR: Yes. It’s feasible that tampering could have occurred. The inhibitors can be opened with a set of precision screwdrivers.

SEN. HOFFMANN: Fine. I’m glad we’re making progress here. Your attorney seems to be fidgeting, Ms. Weir. If he needs to visit the men’s room, I think you can let him go now. I believe we can get some straight answers without his advice …

There had been three of them: a small pack although maybe much larger once, since the others had been killed by larger predators or simply died from disease or old age. They had been hunting together in a deep valley in a place which, one day, would be known almost mythically as Asiamerica. It was twilight when the rainstorm had begun, but they were still hungry and there was still plenty of prey to be caught before the light vanished from the world. Perhaps they were in pursuit of a larger dinosaur like a lumbering tenontosaurus. Perhaps they had simply become lost on the way back to their den.