“Hardly,” he answered calmly. “I’m implying nothing of the sort. I am announcing to you without fear of repudiation that Cryptozoica is
definitely
not a fraud. It is the largest of a two-island chain recorded on the old seventeenth and eighteenth century charts as the Tamtungs. Dinosaurid survivors do exist upon it. How many, the actual genus and pedigree remains to be fully documented. Honoré, we want you to be instrumental in that documentation, to tell the world about it and legitimize the discovery.”
Honoré stared unblinkingly at the image of the bearded man on the screen. Because of the fluttering pixels and grainy reception, it was impossible to tell if Belleau was joking or merely deranged.
“Aubrey—” She broke off and angrily began to remove the headset. “I don’t know what the bloody hell you’re trying to pull here, but I don’t appreciate it.”
“I’m completely serious, Dr. Roxton.” Belleau’s voice came as sharp as a whip-crack over the earpiece, causing her to wince. “I can prove what I say. You bloody well know I don’t go in for practical jokes. Foolish waste of time and concentration.”
Honoré knew he spoke the truth, but she said, “Perhaps not, but you could be the victim of one or fallen prey to a hoax. That was the general consensus of opinion in the scientific community about the Cryptozoica business, right—an elaborate hoax that didn’t quite come off? Who is reviving it now?”
“No one, because it’s not a hoax.” Belleau exhaled a slow, weary breath. “I’ll be blunt with you…a handful of people have always known of Cryptozoica’s existence but they also knew that it could conceivably be the single most influential discovery in modern human culture. I know it sounds fantastic, but there it is.”
‘It sounds more than fantastic.” Very slowly, very deliberately enunciating each syllable, Honoré said, “It sounds im-pos-si-ble. It’s ridiculous for two scientists such as ourselves to even discuss such a thing.”
Belleau nodded. “I once felt as you did. But I came to learn that living dinosaurs are not a zoological impossibility, particularly in areas that have been geologically stable for the past sixty million years. Larger ectothermic dinosaurs would have had a more successful chance of thriving in stable, warm, equatorial regions than warm-blooded animals with faster metabolic rates. Ectothermic creatures also require only ten percent of the amount of the food taken in by fully endothermic animals.”
“I can’t argue that,” Honoré admitted. “But determining dinosaur energetics and thermal biology without studying living models is pure pseudo-scientific speculation, the realm of cryptozoologists, not paleontologists. There’s no evidence that humanity and dinosaurs coexisted, for even a short period of time. The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event occurred 65 million years ago, long before the appearance of the most primitive hominid.”
“One with an open mind could argue that legends and ancient works of traditional art depict dinosaurs interacting with Man,” replied Belleau. “The Ica stones found in Peru bear carvings of both humans and dinosaurs, not to mention fossilized footprints of hominid and dinosaurid that were found imbedded in rock strata from the same era. There is the carving of an apparent Stegosaur stenops found on a column in Angkor Wat.
“Less dramatically, there is the coelacanth, a fish believed to have died out even before the dinosaurs, that is still swimming off the coast of Africa, not to mention a wasp thought extinct for twenty-five million years was discovered to have survived in California, of all places.”
Honoré brushed away Belleau’s remarks with an impatient gesture. “Yes, yes. It’s also been suggested that a species of plesiosaur account for tales of sea and lake monsters, such as the Loch Ness Monster. Sheerest eyewash.”
“Entertain for a moment just the
notion
that you are wrong,” Belleau said. “That a group of dinosaurids from the late Cretaceous Period managed to survive the K-T extinction event and continued to breed and reproduce in virtual isolation for millions of years. What do you think the impact of this revelation would be on the world at large, let alone the scientific community?”
“Before or after all scientists are tarred, feathered and our degrees burned at high noon in the village square?”
Lines of irritation appeared on Belleau’s high forehead. “It’s a serious question.”
Honoré considered the man’s words for a moment, then said quietly, “Possibly such a discovery could challenge everything, perhaps all of our beliefs about science and evolution and even our perception of the very process of creation. Such a finding would deal a crushing blow to the hypothesis of a unique evolutionary sequence. Darwinism might have to be re-evaluated…not to mention the boost it could give to creationists.”
“Exactly! That is why we need completely trustworthy public principals to release the information, in a controlled, rational manner. A ridiculous holiday park endeavor would have completely discredited and destroyed the scientific and cultural value. Howard Flitcroft understands that now.”
“That blowhard is still part of this?” she asked skeptically.
“Minimally. Believe me, the highest authorities in scientific institutions around the globe are deeply involved. In return for your own involvement, we are willing to grant you exclusive rights to any and all developmental research that arises. You’ll have first right of refusal of anything in the zoological and paleontological fields connected to Cryptozoica. Your career, your fortune and future will be assured.”
Honoré blinked, her thought processes alternately staggering and freezing in place. She shook her head. “I don’t quite…Aubrey, you’re serious? Really serious?”
He grinned. “As the proverbial broken leg, darlin’. I need to meet you at the Buenos Aires airport no later than tomorrow noon. Transportation has already been dispatched to fetch you.”
“But I haven’t agreed to anything!” she protested. “I don’t have enough information on which to base a decision. I’ve got to think this through.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to think it through. But while you’re doing so, please don’t let me—and yourself—down. This project is proceeding apace, regardless of your participation. Without you, there’s no way to ascertain its direction, but with you on board, everything will be validated. You’ll be supplied with all the information you require. I hope to see you in the lovely flesh very soon, Dr. Roxton.”
The image of Aubrey Belleau faded from the screen. Slowly, Honoré took off the headset. She felt as if she were underwater, floundering in a sea of confusion and even madness.
Amanda suddenly threw the tent flap aside, her eyes wide with excitement. “Doctor!”
“What?”
Wordlessly, the young woman pointed to the helicopter that flew over the top of a ridgeline. Honoré rose and went to stand beside Amanda. The spinning rotors kicked up a cloud of dust as it landed on the far side of the perimeter. There was an insignia imprinted on the fuselage, a blue circle with the letters HFP overlapping in the center of it.
Honoré muttered sourly, “Howard Philips Flitcroft. Minimal involvement.”
The pinnacled towers of the Natural History Museum rose from the foggy heart of London like the ghost of a medieval cathedral. It wasn’t often that Aubrey Belleau had the opportunity to appreciate its ornate terracotta façade acrawl with the sculpted likenesses of apes, fish and human skulls in the blue-gray hours between midnight and dawn.
Sitting in the back seat of his Rolls Royce Silver Spur limousine, Belleau eyed the arches and flying buttresses with appreciation. Heavy yellow fog wafting in from the Thames pressed against the windows. Still, the temperature was moderately warm for London at hard on three o’clock in the morning.
He didn’t find the looming edifice of the museum at all intimidating. Rather, as he was the latest in a long line of Belleaus whose professional and personal life were inextricably linked to the fortunes of the institution, he found the sight inspiring.
Oakshott swerved the Rolls Royce into the private parking lot at the rear of the Darwin Centre. The guard leaned out of his glass-walled booth, recognized the automobile and the ID sticker on the windshield and waved it through the checkpoint.
As Oakshott braked the big car to a stop, Belleau made sure the computer and video uplink were disconnected. Honoré hadn’t asked him from where he was transmitting, nor would he have told her the truth if she had. Neither he nor any member of his family had ever violated the secrecy oath of the School of Night.
Oakshott parked the car and turned off the engine. Quickly, he got out, placing the step stool down before he opened the rear door. A gigantic man in gray chauffeur’s livery, he stood over six and half feet tall and tipped the scales at three hundred pounds. His long face was dead white. In his uniform, complete with a peaked cap and jodhpurs, Oakshott looked like a store window manikin from the late nineteenth century.
Aubrey Belleau slid from the car seat and stepped onto, then off the stool, twirling his miniature silver-knobbed walking stick like a Victorian dandy. He walked with a rolling gait along a flagstone path. “I shan’t be long, Oakshott. Wait in the car, take a nap if you’ve a mind to, that’s a good fellow.”
As he approached the service entrance, he heard the distant bong of Big Ben striking three. Reflexively, he glanced in the direction of the clock tower but because of the fog, he could barely discern its outline.
At the door, he removed the gold stickpin from his scarf and gave it a brief visual inspection. It was tipped with a symbol resembling a caduceus, depicting a pair of serpents coiled around a staff topped by an eye within a pyramid.
Inserting the end of the pin into the keyhole below the doorknob, he probed for a second, then with the click of a solenoid, the door swung silently open. He stepped into a foyer containing janitorial and cleaning supplies and closed the door behind him, the solenoid catching automatically.
Angling his walking stick over a shoulder, Belleau strode into a broad gallery filled with iguanas and tortoises, frozen in attitudes of arrested movement. Masterpieces of the model-maker’s art, the lights of the display cases glittered from their scaled bodies and staring eyes like unfinished gems. Terns and albatrosses hovered overhead, suspended by almost invisible filaments.
He marched swiftly past the reinforced glass tank holding the preserved remains of Archie the squid, the eight meter long example of Architeuthis dux floating in a solution of saline and formaldehyde. He didn’t so much as glance at the thousands of animal carcasses encased within glass. His footsteps echoed and re-echoed within the vast gallery.
Passing beneath an arch, he opened a narrow, nondescript door and entered a big chamber, shaped like the inside of a drum, with oak-paneled walls. High bookshelves rose nearly three meters above the floor. A wheeled library ladder leaned against the far wall.
Bronze busts mounted on marble pedestals occupied the spaces between the shelves, each one haloed by a small light fixture. Belleau’s gaze passed over them one by one, an almost unconscious form of paying homage to Charles Darwin, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Dee, Gerardus Mercator, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Isaac Newton, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Sir Richard Owen and Thomas Huxley.
A big round Japanese lantern hung from the center of the conical ceiling where the heavy beams converged, shedding a rich yellow light over a plank table made of bird’s-eye maple. The four men seated around the table were all direct descendants of the men who had founded the School of Night in 1592, and each one was a respected representative of a different scientific discipline, ranging from biochemistry to quantum physics.
“Good evening, classmates,” Belleau said jovially, then as was the custom upon entering the chamber, he recited the school’s motto, quoting from Shakespeare’s
Love’s Labour Lost:
“Black is the badge of hell /The hue of dungeons and the school of night.”
The other men responded with grunted monosyllables. Andrew Wadley didn’t even try to pat back his yawn. He demanded, “Why must we convene these meetings at three AM? It’s becoming damned inconvenient.”
“Tradition frequently is,” replied Belleau stiffly. “Three AM is the midnight of the human soul, when the blood trickles at low tide and the heart beats at its slowest rhythm. We’re more receptive to new ideas, more suggestible, more inclined to entertain different ways of contemplating and reevaluating our narrow view of reality.”
“It’s also the time when the elderly most often die in their sleep,” interjected Jacob Haining dourly. He was the senior member of the group, eighty-three years old. Short, silver-haired and rail-thin, his brown suit was the same color as the oak paneling.
“According Dr. Dee’s Codex,” said Francis Dee smugly, “the original school met at three AM so as to avoid the prying eyes of palace spies.”
Belleau took his chair, using the special crossbars to push himself up into its elevated seat. “As I recall, John Dee never received his doctorate.”
Dee, an astronomer in his sixties with a moon face and eyes that blinked nervously from behind the round lenses of spectacles, said irritably, “My ancestor was a founding member of the school, nevertheless.”
Belleau only smiled superciliously. He knew the man spoke the truth, but his habit of exaggerating John Dee’s influence during the formation of the School of Night never failed to annoy him. As it was, Belleau resented how his own great-great-grandfather owed his pre-eminent position in the School to Dee’s skills as an Elizabethan era cryptographer.
Conceived by Sir Walter Raleigh, the original cabal of scholars secretly studied science, philosophy, and religion, and all were suspected of being atheists. Atheism in the court of Queen Elizabeth was a charge nearly the equivalent of treason, since the monarch was the head of the church, and to denounce the church was to be against the monarch.
However, inasmuch as atheism was also a synonym for anarchy, that was a charge frequently brought against anyone who was the slightest bit religiously and politically troublesome. Guy Fawkes was a member of the earliest incarnation of the school, or more accurately, a pawn.
The School of Night was not particularly unique. It was but one of many secret societies that sprang up in Europe in the tumultuous period between the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Religious and alchemical cults arose among the nobility, convened in the shadows to evade ecclesiastical inquisitors.
By its very nature, the School of Night was heretical, working toward a rationalist view of society and human destiny free of biblical influence. It traced the roots of its progenitors to the so-called mystery schools of ancient Egypt, which allegedly passed on great secrets about creation and the earliest civilizations, and through symbolism and allegory taught lost mathematical techniques, as well as advanced science and philosophy. Although wielding a degree of covert influence in the pursuit of scientific thought over the last century, the school had existed primarily to keep a single discovery hidden.
In its present incarnation, the School of Night wasn’t a large organization, nor was there any reason for it to be. It had a four hundred year-old legacy preserved from generation to generation, although Belleau was concerned about passing on the torch to unworthy hands. Although the membership rules excluded females, he had suggested more than once than the School modify its stringent entrance requirements. The sexism was one of the carryovers from the original founders, none of whom could have been accused of holding enlightened views about the equality of women, particularly Raleigh.
Belleau felt positive Honoré Roxton would make an exemplary member, but none of his colleagues shared his enthusiasm. Therefore, he had no intention of giving them a choice in the matter.
“I’m getting a wee too old for these late hours myself,” complained Gregor McArdle in his guttural Scots brogue. A big, rawboned man in his mid-50s, a red spade beard bristled at his chin.
“It’s only one night a month,” retorted Haining peevishly.
“Yes, but you’re a bachelor. You try to explaining to a wife why your lodge holds regular meetings at three o’ clock in the bloody morning. The looks I get at the breakfast table—” McArdle shook his head in frustration.
Belleau rapped the knob of his walking stick on the table edge. “Then let us convene the meeting, get our business out of the way and you can go back to bed and to your wife.”
“What precisely is our business again?” Haining demanded, his nasal, strident voice punching painfully against Belleau’s eardrums.
“The Tamtungs…or to be specific, the main island so quaintly rechristened Cryptozoica by Howard Flitcroft’s public relations firm.”
“There is news?” asked Dee.
“Excellent news, in fact. My offer to buy the interests held by Bai Suzhen has been tacitly accepted.”
Haining’s wrinkled face screwed up as if he smelled or tasted something foul.
“Words cannot express my disgust at our dealings with a criminal organization…an Oriental one at that. Sir Walter is no doubt revolving madly inside his crypt.”
Belleau ignored the comment. “Through our intermediaries in the States, Flitcroft has been convinced to finance our film project in the hopes of recouping his investment losses. It took several months of persuasion, but he finally saw the wisdom in the proposition.”
Belleau paused, chuckled, and added, “Of course, the stipulation is that we will have ultimate approval over the final edit.”
McArdle shook his head. “I understand your worry about leaving the Tamtungs unsecured, but all these efforts, all this subterfuge and money we’re pumping into the project…well, it’s tantamount to trying to bribe the genie to return to the lamp, isn’t it? The truth is bound to get out…even what happened to poor Dr. Perry all those years ago.”
“I agree,” said Wadley. “We were able to contain the problem over the last hundred years, but if we allow a film crew in there, especially into the interior—”
“—The whole point is that the truth of the place will indeed be known,” broke in Belleau impatiently. “But we will control the degree of truth that is disseminated and to do that, we must have the complete cooperation of everyone involved. That’s why I have taken the liberty of contacting Dr. Roxton.”
Dee cocked his head in puzzlement. “Honoré Roxton? What does she have to with this?”
Belleau smiled at the man patronizingly. “Honoré is one of the best-known paleontologists in the world. She will be the voice and the figure of final authority regarding the ‘truth’ of Cryptozoica.” He crooked his index fingers to indicate quotation marks. “She will essentially be the star of the television program…or if all goes according to plan, the television series.”
Haining spoke up in a sharp shout of outrage. “Then she will share in the secret. She will have to be told about the Prima Materia!”
Belleau nodded. “Exactly.”
“She’ll never believe you,” argued Wadley. “She would have to be shown the sample and the lost journal of the
Beagle
. In which case, she might as well be accorded full membership of the school
“Exactly.” said Belleau again, this time with a smug smile.
The four men stared at him, shocked into speechlessness. Finally, Dee ventured, “My dear fellow, as much as we respect Dr. Roxton, she’s still a woman. It’s just not
done.
”
Placing his hands flat on the tabletop, Belleau surveyed the men seated around him with a challenging stare. In a low voice, heavy with conviction, he said, “Even after all of these years, you still do not understand. As of 1836, we of the School of Night were no longer scholars or intellectuals engaged in the pursuit of studying and compiling esoterica. We became caretakers, guardians of the secret of creation, of the very source of all life on Earth. As such, we may very well become the saviors of all life when the inevitable next mass extinction becomes a reality, instead of sensationalistic fodder for talk television or cheap science periodicals.
“Our group must exert complete control over the resources of the island by any means that are expedient, even if those measures include entering into business arrangements with Asian criminal organizations, deceiving American millionaires, discrediting and silencing witnesses or even granting a woman membership in our sacrosanct order.”
The last two words were spoken with undisguised sarcasm.
Haining bristled at Belleau’s tone. “You spoke of our traditions earlier…be mindful of them now!”