Dinosaur Summer (21 page)

Sammy was the first to move in. The centrosaur's truck was driven a few dozen yards to the side where his entrance lay open. The roustabouts hauled out the ramps and hooked them to the back of the truck.

Sammy was facing forward, and the tricky part was backing him down the ramps. Shellabarger unhooked the watering trough and slid in through the narrow slot. Sammy watched this with interest, and nosed the trainer forcefully once he stood up in the cage. Shellabarger pushed his beak back. "Open the door before he thinks this is a game," he shouted, and Keller and Kasem unhooked the cage door and swung it wide with a grating squeak. Shellabarger prodded Sammy back slowly, talking to soothe him.

"Peter, stand by the side and tell him it's okay," Shellabarger ordered. Peter did so, and they both coaxed the centrosaur backward step by step until he was out of the cage and on the ramp. Sammy looked down, then raised his beak skyward, trilling and honking in concern. Animals as heavy as the centrosaur did not enjoy heights. Shellabarger renewed his efforts and Peter patted Sammy's thick ankles and then his pebble-skinned haunch. When Sammy stood on solid rock, he turned around slowly, sniffed the air, and then sidestepped, almost treading on Peter's feet. Peter jumped aside. Anthony took a picture of this, but gave his son a fatherly grimace and said, "Watch yourself!"

Shellabarger and Peter led the centrosaur to the enclosure. Beyond Sammy's wide door lay a pile of fresh-cut leaves, ferns, even some flowers. Sammy looked back, as if regretting a decision to commit himself to a cage again, however green and leafy, and waddled in with several resignedwhuffs.

Once he was inside, the struthios andAepyornis were unloaded into their enclosures. The avisaurs remained in their cage.

The colonel and his soldiers stood by their tents, watching the preparations. The colonel was never without his thin-barreled pistol. He wore MacArthur sunglasses now and his expression was unreadable. The bridge motor was running as smoothly as could be expected, and the Mendez twins had finished yet another inspection of the bridge.

With OBie's cameras set up, the bridge swung slowly and with much groaning and grinding of gears across the abyss, finallychunking into place over the concrete and steel pad on the opposite side. Rust and dirt sifted down from the bridge's girders. The engine coughed and kicked out thick smoke from within its ramshackle house. As a precaution, Shellabarger ordered the engine shut down.

"I would be privileged to drive the truck across," Billie told the trainer, standing before him with face lowered but eyes looking up expectantly. Shellabarger glared down at Billie, then turned to OBie.

"What about that Julio fellow?" he asked, looking among the drivers for the Carib. Julio stepped forward, but nodded at Billie. A murmur arose among the Indians. Peter watched them closely.

The colonel's translator walked from the tents to the truck and approached Shellabarger. Catalina also stepped forward.

"El Colonelwould prefer that no Indians be involved with this," the adjutant said. "There is concern . . . of injury."

Billie did not look at the adjutant, but kept his eyes focused on the trainer.

"I'll drive it across myself," Shellabarger said, and strode toward the truck cab. Billie blocked his way with a lithe sidestep.

"Se�we have drawn lots, and I have won the draw. It is a privilege to risk one's life for the return of the Challenger to his home."

Catalina questioned Billie quickly in Spanish. Billie responded in another language Peter was not familiar with. Wetherford, standing between Peter and Anthony, said, "That's Makritare, I think."

Catalina struggled to respond in kind. With a minimum of words and gestures, Billie answered her questions, his meek attitude betrayed by the stiffness of his posture and the darting of his eyes. Catalina turned to Shellabarger. "Billie tells me the Indians have chosen him to prepare the Challenger's road."

"What's the colonel worried about?" OBie asked her.

"The Army is concerned about any Indian acquiring special status from stepping on El Grande."

"I see that," OBie said. "But what can they do about it? Surely some Indian is going to swing across someday and return."

"That is why Colonel de Badajoz is here with his troops," Catalina said. "They kill any who try."

Peter stared at Billie. The young mestizo did not seem very heroic.

"Then the hell with the colonel," Shellabarger said. "Billie, you go. You'll drive the truck across, then back it up and return it to where it is now." He faced the adjutant. "No special privileges. Just a little truck driving."

The adjutant returned to the colonel. He studied the faces on the Indian and mestizo workers, his mustache twitching nervously. His hand strayed once more to the butt of his pistol. Clearly, he sensed the tension here, and with the radio still useless, calling for reinforcements was out of the question. He nodded.

The adjutant shuttled back to Shellabarger and OBie. "That is okay. But the truck and its driver must not stay on the other side for more than a few minutes. We must protect the natural habitat against intrusion." His expression practically pleaded for them to believe this excuse.

The colonel barked orders in Spanish and three soldiers with rifles positioned themselves near the bridge.

Shellabarger stepped up on the bridge and stamped his foot, then grinned over his shoulder.

"If there should be an accident," the adjutant told Catalina, "you will absolve the Army and Colonel de Badajoz of all blame."

Billie got into the truck that had carried Sammy's cage, the one with the shattered windshield. He started the engine and looked toward Shellabarger. "Go," the trainer said.

Billie turned the truck slightly and aligned it with the bridge. He crept up the concrete ramp and onto the metal deck. Peter held his breath. The bridge took the truck's weight with a silence that surprised him. He had half expected dramatic groans of straining metal, stressed rivets popping, warning signs of real danger. Instead, the bridge seemed solid as a rock.

The truck rolled slowly along the span. Ray followed its progress with the portable camera. Anthony took several pictures, then stood behind the soldiers, his Leica held ready.

The truck reached the opposite side of the bridge. Its weight brought the bridge down with a heavy clang against the concrete on the opposite side, but the girders held. Billie drove onto the cracked and weathered macadam roadway beyond.

The workers watched with solemn expressions. Shellabarger nodded his satisfaction and glanced at the soldiers and the colonel. "All right," the trainer shouted across the chasm. "Bring 'er back."

Billie reversed the truck's gears and backed onto the bridge, leaning out of the window to gauge his progress. The truck returned to Pico Poco without causing any apparent damage. Billie stopped the truck and turned off the engine. The workers seemed to relax as one. Grinning, Billie stepped down from the cab.

"What's the colonel going to object to now?" OBie asked in an undertone.

Catalina spoke to the adjutants. The debate seemed heated; arms waved vigorously, but somehow, the Do�endez prevailed. Colonel de Badajoz threw up his hands in disgust and stood by his personal tent as the shorter adjutant unfolded a camp chair.

Catalina smiled broadly and walked toward the stockade. "You may send the animals across," she said to Shellabarger.

"Are we permitted to set foot on El Grande?" Shellabarger asked Catalina. She asked why he would want to do this.

"Because I expect things to go wrong," the trainer replied. "We may need to escort some of the animals. I've always planned to help the avisaurs across personally. I don't want the colonel's soldiers getting itchy trigger fingers."

Do�ndez referred to her attach�ase and withdrew a folder filled with papers. "The edict of 1927 and amendments for 1929 instruct that for scientific purposes, brief footfalls on the Great Tepui, as occasion requires, are permitted for a few unarmed members of an authorized expedition," she said.

Wetherford grinned.

Catalina caught Wetherford's expression and added, "We interpret this liberally to mean that you may stand on the opposite side to help return the animals. But for the sake of peace with the colonel,por favor, no Indians."

"Good," Shellabarger said.

The trainer clapped Billie on the shoulder. Billie took a place beside Ray and Peter as Keller and Kasem made their preparations.

Kasem and Keller led Sammy from his enclosure to the bridge, following the marks established by OBie and the film crew.

Shellabarger stood beside Sammy for a moment. He whispered to the centrosaur. Sammy shook his shield vigorously and sniffed the air.

"Go, fella," Shellabarger said, poking Sammy in the rear with his prod. Sammy resisted, turned, and headed back to the enclosure. The trainer ran to bar his way.

"After all this, he doesn't want to go," Wetherford observed. "He doesn't want to give up his meal ticket."

Shellabarger prodded the centrosaur into a tight turn and managed to guide him back to the bridge. Again, Sammy reversed, gently butted Shellabarger aside, and pushed at him all the way back to the enclosure. Inside the fence, he snuffled the remaining fronds and leaves and started eating.

Shellabarger and Keller removed him again, with infinite patience and gentle words, and aimed him toward the bridge. A dim idea of what was expected of him seemed to enter the centrosaur's mind.

Sammy stepped up reluctantly onto the concrete, then advanced a few feet onto the bridge itself. He stopped to peer down through the thick iron grating at the chasm below. The fear of heights struck him and he bellowed miserably.

"Peter!"

Peter came forward at the trainer's call.

"We're going to have to baby him all the way," Shellabarger said.

"All the way to El Grande?" Peter asked, looking across at the forbidden plateau. The broken battlements and faces appeared less ominous in bright daylight, but the landscape still seemed to deny and reject human presence.

"He won't go by himself," Shellabarger said.

Peter looked over his shoulder at his father. The unspoken question passed between them, and the answer returned the same way. Anthony met his son's gaze and said not a word.

Peter did not know whether to feel terrified or privileged.

They flanked the centrosaur. Shellabarger poked him gently in the withers. Sammy seemed to finally make his own decision; he began to move. Together, Peter behind and Shellabarger in front, they accompanied Sammy across the old steel span.

The dinosaur snuffled at the air with each step, then quickened his pace until Peter had to trot behind him. Shellabarger stepped to one side and flattened himself against the rail, letting the dinosaur pass. The bridge banged against the concrete abutment again as Sammy's weight reached the opposite side, shivering wisps of dirt and rust from the beams.

Sammy broke into a gallop and leaped onto the broken roadway beyond. His feet thundered on the weed-grown surface for two dozen yards and then he stopped abruptly, shield swinging forward with its own momentum, his haunches and withers tensing beneath the thick, scaly skin. Peter joined Shellabarger at the end of the bridge.

Across the abyss, on Pico Poco, OBie sat behind the dollymounted camera, filming steadily. Ray stood beside him.

"It's all yours," Shellabarger said, shooing the animal with his hands. "Go on! Git! Before we send Dagger across."

Sammy swiveled his long beaked snout and peered at them with his left eye. A rope of saliva swung from his mouth and his sides heaved with thick, deep breaths.

"He drools when he's excited," Shellabarger said to Peter, as if confiding the dark secret of a family member. "Git!"

Sammy spun about with a swiftness that startled Peter. For a second, Peter thought the centrosaur was going to double back and charge them. He lowered his head like a bull and made throaty clucking sounds, then stared over the broken macadam at Shellabarger and Peter. He lifted and twisted his head, stretching his neck skin into taut wrinkles, and his eyes showed their yellow sclera.

"He's going to do it," Shellabarger said in a whisper, as if for Peter's benefit alone. "He doesn't remember--it's been too long for his little walnut brain--but heknows the place." The trainer's face contorted. Peter could not tell whether Shellabarger was going to laugh or cry. Peter watched the centrosaur, his own chest and throat tight. "Go on," he encouraged Sammy. He waved his hands as Shellabarger had done.

Sammy turned more slowly this time, and with great dignity stumped across the field of green grass. With a shiver of his rump, he squeezed between two high rounded lumps of sandstone, and vanished.

The wind blew across the empty plateau. Peter looked down at his feet. He was standing on the Lost World. Beyond the rocks, just miles or maybe only yards away, were hundreds, even thousands of dinosaurs and other animals, some much bigger than Sammy.

Shellabarger put his hand on Peter's shoulder. "We're not done," he said.

Peter could not immediately break the spell.

"Come on," the trainer said.

They walked back over the bridge to Pico Poco.

The roustabouts and workers were making progress breaking down the steel cages. They had paused to watch Sammy's liberation; now they were back at work, hauling the sections of cage and stacking them beside the bridge, preparing for the venator's release. In the meantime, however, there were the struthios, theAepyornis, and the avisaurs.

Ray approached the enclosure with the portable camera on his shoulder. One of the film crew carried a lightweight tripod and set it down on an X marked with black tape. Ray mounted the camera on the tripod and looked over the viewer, grinning radiantly. "What was it like, standing over there?" he asked Peter.

Peter smiled. "You should try it," he said.

"I'll do my best," Ray said.

Anthony nodded to Peter, his face solemn.

The struthios came next. Shellabarger released them from the enclosure and they took dancing steps past him, swayed their heads back and forth on their long necks, gawked at the mestizos, the film crew, Ray and his camera, and the bridge. Their eyes locked on the bridge and the plateau beyond.

"Come on, pretties," Shellabarger said. He tapped them on their upper thighs with his prod. They looked at him with affronted dignity, then loped ahead, weaving across each other's path, stopping on the roadway just before the ramp to the bridge.

OBie's crew pushed the dolly forward to the end of its rails. The shiny black eye of the camera lens followed the struthios closely. Ray carried his camera to another mark, just out of OBie's shot. Anthony waited until OBie gave him the signal, then moved in closer.

Billie stood with hat in hand, ten yards from the bridge, brow deeply wrinkled. He scratched behind his jaw with a persistent finger.Do�endez and her twin brothers stood beside Billie. Again, the workers and roustabouts had stopped their labor. The colonel and his soldiers came no closer than the front of their tent.

The struthios showed little sentiment for their past. Shellabarger, the circus, the captivity, had no hold on them. As soon as they figured out that the bridge would return them to El Grande, they leaped forward, running as fast as their long legs could take them, over the bridge and down the road. They veered sharply right, skirting the boulders, and blended into a wind-ragged stand of trees and bushes where the old plateau road had once passed, on the east side.

Shellabarger beat his hat against his pants, replaced it on his wispy gray hair, and said, "Next."

TheAepyornis had watched the other animals over the wall of her enclosure. As soon as Shellabarger opened her gate, she leaped out, knocking him on his rear, and dashed for the bridge. Then, abruptly, she turned and emitted a heartfelt screech of alarm. She ran back, stopped by the enclosure, then tried to run south. The roustabouts gave chase and caught up with her only because she hesitated before the soldiers and the tents. Colonel de Badajoz remained seated, but gripped the arms of his camp chair firmly.

Waving their hats, Keller and Kasem herded her back toward Shellabarger. She looked at him indignantly, as if betrayed.

"It's your home, dammit," Shellabarger said to her. "You have to go home."

Mrs. Birdqueen lifted her left foot as if to strike out at the trainer, but then lowered it, and dropped her head as well. She squawked plaintively, then gave several melodious, fluting calls.

Shellabarger approached slowly. She lifted her long neck and ruffled her body feathers. Shellabarger gave a signal and she dropped her head down from its queenly altitude of twelve feet. She stared him straight in the eye with her round, blinking orb, beak agape.

Then she shook herself vigorously and backed away. With great dignity, head held high and neck curved like the body of a question mark, she walked with elegant, high steps up to the bridge, stopped, and called again, sounding like the alto pipes on a pump organ.

The avisaurs trilled back at her from their cage.

Shellabarger ran past Peter and said, "I'm changing my plans. Help me grab the avisaurs. They'll hang around here all day if we let them loose by themselves, but they'll follow Mrs. Birdqueen anywhere."

Peter helped Shellabarger remove the toothed birds from their cages. The trainer handed Keller and Peter leather pads to protect their skin from flexing talons. The trainer carried two of them on his shoulders, where they flapped and screeched loudly. Peter held two more, feeling their sharp claws dig in even through the leather, and Keller the remaining two.

Mrs. Birdqueen had waited patiently for her circus mates. Now, she started across the bridge. Released directly behind her, the avisaurs hopped and ran along the bridge, alternating between roadrunner gait and bird gait, tail feathers spread wide, wings extended. For a moment, Peter was afraid one of the toothed birds might jump off the bridge, but for all their clownish darting, they stayed on the span.

Mrs. Birdqueen reached El Grande, turned, and rose to her full height. She stretched her stubby flightless wings. Two of the avisaurs ran around her and flapped a dozen yards across the grass and broken macadam. One made it to the top of a wind-polished rock and called to the others from its perch. The Aepyornis shook her body and head one final time and followed the same route the struthios had taken, into the brush.

One avisaur stayed on its rock perch, watching them. The other toothed birds disappeared without a backward glance.

Shellabarger walked slowly away from the bridge. He idly patted his pockets for nonexistent cigarettes, then looked at Peter and gave him a smirk. One animal remained: the venator. Catalina said to the trainer, "Congratulations,se� Your big animals have made it."

"One more to go. The venator's no lightweight," Shellabarger said.

The woman turned to Anthony. He raised his camera and took her picture. She smiled. Everyone's spirits seemed raised by the sight of the animals set free. Peter was too exhilarated to feel even a twinge of concern.

"Sammy's going to miss us," he told Shellabarger, following him toward the venator's cage.

Shellabarger grunted and told Billie to bring Dagger's truck around to the bridge. The venator lurched a few inches as the truck started, but remained squatting. "I hope he hasn't got sores and blood poisoning, sitting like that," the trainer said.

The truck rolled to within ten feet of the concrete ramp.

"All right, let's get that runway built," Shellabarger said. The workers and roustabouts gathered around the pieces of cage and began to move them into place.

Catalina and her brothers approached OBie and Ray. "You may shoot from the other side, if you wish," she said. "It is permitted for a brief time." She gave Anthony a look that Peter was all too familiar with. His father attracted the looks of many women. "You should get pictures from El Grande, too."

OBie looked up from the big camera to Ray. "You go," he said. "I've been on the plateau before."

Ray and Anthony moved toward the bridge. Peter looked at Shellabarger. The trainer cocked his head to one side. "Your work's done here," he said. "Go on across and get your fill. It may be the last time for any of us."

Peter ran, then caught himself, slowed, and walked quickly to the ramp to join his father and Ray on the ramp before the bridge. "May I go, too?" Peter asked.

Anthony faced the length of the bridge, one hand on his Leica, the other stuck firmly in his pocket. "Looks pretty safe from here. We'll only be there for a few minutes."

Peter grinned.

"It'll look better in the magazine, with your picture, standing on El Grande," Anthony added. They started across the bridge.

Ray carried the portable camera on his shoulder. "A few panicky shots to complete the effect," he said. "Lord, my hands are trembling."

They walked down the ramp on the opposite side. Black clouds flowed overhead, threatening more rain. Across the chasm, on Pico Poco, the milling people seemed incredibly far away. The rushing updraft muffled the clanging and hammering of the cage pieces being assembled for Dagger's runway.

They stopped. Peter scuffed his boot in the loose gravel and mud covering the sandstone surface.

"It feels pretty sacred, doesn't it?" Anthony asked.

Peter nodded. His palms were sweaty even in the cool air.

"Glad you came?" He nodded again. Words would not come easily.

Ray dutifully recorded the people on the opposite side, then framed the venator. "I'd love to get a shot of him walking right by here," he said, swinging his hand to the foot of the ramp.

"Pretty expensive shot," Peter said.

"No doubt," Ray murmured, one eye in the viewfinder, panning the camera slowly, the other eye half open and unfocused. "Nooo-o-ooo doubt."

Peter studied the rocky mounds. This end of El Grande sank slowly into a shallow bowl filled with rock-strewn jungle. The rocks between the edge of the chasm and the bowl formed a difficult maze almost a mile wide, with some open areas of as much as an acre; but mostly the maze consisted of tight little passageways, wandering in twisted confusion for hundreds of yards. Unless one knew a secret path or hacked through the thick patch of jungle growing over the old road on the eastern side, it could take days to get to the bowl.

Not that Peter was considering such a thing.

He looked across the chasm at the workers. They had erected the cage runway and were now wiring and cabling it to the bridge. Shellabarger stood with his back to them. OBie and the film crew were rearranging the tracks and dolly.

Peter wondered what it would be like to be alone on the Grand Tepui, on Kahu Hidi, as Billie's father had been.

Ray set the camera down and flexed his shoulders. "All my life, this place has haunted me. Nobody wanted my space creatures and mythical beings . . . They kept saying, `Look, we have all the monsters we want right here and now. Why make 'em up?'" He shook his head. "For OBie and me, El Grande has been the bane of our existence. But you know what?"

He gazed across the rocks. A few drops of rain spattered on the sandstone around them.

"I forgive it," Ray said. "Just being here, I forgive everything."

"Time to come back," Shellabarger called over the wind. "We're going to hook 'er up." Already they had fastened one side of the runway to the cage and slung the ramps from the bed of the venator's truck.

The workers clustered around the cage. Soldiers milled a few yards from the edge of the chasm, rifles slung. Peter sawel Colonel standing with his adjutants near the truck with the broken windshield. He did not understand why he could be here and the Indians could not. It seemed manifestly unfair.

"Let's not overstay our welcome," Anthony said. "Wouldn't want to have to explain to your mom why you were eaten."

Peter saw a man running from the middle of the workers. It was Billie. He jumped through the gap in the cage runway and sprinted across the bridge. The Indians and mestizos scattered in all directions from the bridge, as if to create a diversion. Before the three of them could move, Billie was across. Shots rang out over the chasm.