Dinosaur Summer (26 page)

Billie climbed a wall of grotesque ridges and prominences, like a jumble of old stone men with deep-set blind eyes and pouting lips. Peter followed, his left arm protesting with each tug and pull, and stood beside him. They looked north from their vantage, level with the upper canopy, over thick forest dotted with tors of yellow and brown rock. Several miles away, a small lake glistened brilliant blue in the afternoon sun. Just beyond, past the opposite side of the bowl, Peter saw a thin line of more blue: perhaps the south-central lake.

"I've lost their trail," Billie said. "But they must have come here. They did not go back."

Peter tried to spot any sign of them. He couldn't. Then he saw something about a mile northeast, a clearing in the forest. Beside the clearing rose a massive, artificial-looking structure, like a step pyramid in Mexico, though cruder in outline.

"What's that?" Peter asked, pointing. Such a formation had not been on any of the maps, nor had it been mentioned in the books he had read. "I don't know," Billie said.

"Did people ever live here?"

"Not our kind of people," Billie said.

"More friends of Odosha?"

Billie cocked his head to one side. "Odosha is death and your devil and the power of night. He would invite all his friends here if he could. He is master of the Challenger. He takes the shape ofDinoshi, the biggest Challenger."

Peter had had just about enough of this new Billie. "Do you believe all that?" he asked.

"Do you believe in Jesus and Mary?" Billie asked sternly.

Peter's face reddened. "I've never spent much time in church."

Billie shrugged. "Who knows what is real here? Nothing the whites orFanuru can imagine."

Billie climbed down the other side of the jumble, to the edge of a wall of green. Peter looked behind him regretfully. Still, he did not want to face the dog-lizards again, even if Billie held them in contempt. There might be something to eat in the forest. He would eat leaves pretty soon if he did not find something. He could always find his way back, if Billie did not lead him too deeply into the forest.

Peter used all these excuses, but really, he had no option but to follow Billie. Billie had a machete and knew something, if not everything; Peter had nothing and knew nothing.

Over the jungle, from some distance away, came a low rattling squawk, like a parrot melded with a snare drum and spun on a slow record player. Other sounds--chirping yips, a dismal hooting, and the wheeling reedy cries of a rising pink cloud of birds near the lake, were the jungle's answers.

Peter scrambled down the rough slope and into the green.

Chapter Four

Billie did very little hacking at first. Beneath the thick canopy, the jungle was relatively clear, with huge tree trunks spaced every four or five meters, some wrapped in iron-hard black vines. There was little understory save tiny patches of white flowers rising from pale thick leaves. Peter's feet sank into a thick loam topped with moist dead leaves and bits of bark. Insects, mostly small black ants, scampered across the leaves. Very little sunlight leaked through the high green roof of this shadowy world.

Gradually, the canopy let in more slanting beams of sun and the understory grew thicker as the big trees were spaced farther apart. Huge fallen logs nursed a profusion of orchids and young saplings, as well as fungal shelves hard as wood, orange and brown and black.

"Do you know the names of all these plants and things?" Peter asked.

Billie shook his head. "Some I know from stories. There are big grubs here good to eat--some birds are familiar. Some frogs. A few trees. Not much else. It is different here, like we are fleas going from the body of a man to the body of a god." Peter chuckled despite his hunger. "I'd hate to be a flea on a god," he said.

"Yes! The flea doesn't know where to bite. And when he bites, he gets sick, or has strong dreams."

"If I don't bite something soon, I'll die," Peter said.

"No, you have maybe four, five days before that," Billie said.

"Well, I'm a white," Peter said, trying to mix a little irony with a real message of hunger. "I'm used to three square meals a day."

"I had square bread once," Billie said. "They called it white bread and it was pale. Whites make square meals out of it."

Peter could not tell if he was joking.

After a time, Billie stopped beside a thick clump of bushes beneath a hole in the canopy. He made several signs with his hands, smiled and waved as if saying hello to something in the treetops, and then pulled up a bush. At the end of the bush hung a thick root, like a long potato.

"Here," he said, offering it to Peter. "It is yuca. South it is called manioc."

"That's poisonous until it's fixed," Peter said.

"This is sweet yuca. It is wild here. Some say it was brought down from Kahu Hidi long ago, in the beginning. I will taste it first if you like."

"No, I believe you," Peter said.

"There must not be many animals like Sammy around here," Billie said as Peter bit into the dirty skin and hit a starchy, crisp pulp inside.

"They'd like these, wouldn't they?" Peter asked, chewing.

"Probably. I think there will be small bananas ahead."

"No monkeys?"

"Only us," Billie said.

He picked as many roots as he could carry and forged ahead. Peter took several of Billie's discards and followed. The going was getting tougher and Billie wielded his machete frequently to hack a pathway.

"I don't see how big animals could get through here," Peter said, still eating. The root tasted wonderful, though the starch made his mouth dry. Billie said nothing but stopped and listened. Peter heard a chorus of high-pitched chirping, like big crickets, and then a rattling buzz. "Insects?" he asked, stopping beside Billie.

Billie shook his head. Through the trees, they saw rustling leaves and shooting green forms in the canopy, about thirty yards away. It was a troop of animals the size of howler monkeys, but green. Billie lowered himself to his haunches. He looked at Peter. "Do you know what those are?" he asked.

"No," Peter said.

The troop pushed overhead, the chirping and buzzing suddenly very loud. They had sleek green bodies with long tails and long scaly heads, long wiry legs with four grasping toes, and bright red eyes; Peter wished that one would be still for a moment so he could see it more clearly.

Four of the animals scampered down the trunk of a huge old tree, upside down like squirrels in Central Park. They were about five feet from nose to tip of tail, with snake-like snouts and eyes, beautifully dappled green and bright yellow. They stared at Peter and Billie, righted themselves, and craned their lizard heads on sinuous necks. He noticed they had very long arms, with a flexible membrane folded between the arms and the ribs and hips.

"Tree lizards," Peter said, transfixed by the animals' red gaze. "Flying, too, maybe."

Billie made hand gestures at the animals. They blinked with lazy nonchalance, tensed themselves with heads and eyes focusing straight up the trunk, and then climbed rapidly back to join their fellows in the upper branches. The troop moved on, dropping bits of leaves and branches in its wake.

"Snakes who eat monkeys become this on Kahu Hidi," Billie said.

"Snake monkeys. Friends of Odosha?" Peter asked, only half in jest.

"Yes," Billie said, and smiled quickly at Peter.

"I can't tell if you are joking or serious," Peter said.

Billie frowned for the first time. "I have to leave you soon. I teach you what I can, then you're alone, unless you find your father."

"I'm sorry," Peter said.

"I am not your damned clown Indian, making jokes and telling children's stories. I know how you whites think, even when you try not to."

"Sorry," Peter said again, more quietly.

Billie lifted the roots and the machete. "We will not go hungry for now, no?"

Peter nodded.

Billie seemed suddenly sad. "Everything here is not what I expected. I thought it would be glowing, like a jaguar dream, but it is just another mountain, with different animals and plants. It is not a ghost place."

Peter stood, confused by Billie's sudden change in mood.

"My mother was Colombian. I have too much of others in me, whites andFanuru, and I do not see with the right eyes. It is still Kahu Hidi," Billie concluded.

"Where are you going?" Peter asked. "I mean, do you know where your father went--where he traveled?"

"He followed the Spirit Path and that is all I know." "Where does the Spirit Path go?" Peter asked.

"From the maze, around Lake Akuena to the northern end, the Cloud Desert and Warrior's Shield. There are many ways between."

"What will you do if you meet a Challenger?" Peter asked.

"There is only one Challenger, in many forms. Odosha is the master and comes asDinoshi, the death eagle."

"Yeah, but what will you do?"

Billie shrugged. "Dance or die."

As they proceeded, they soon crossed small streams, shallow at first, meandering between the trees along shifting beds, leaving many islands separated by ten or twelve feet of glistening clear water. They were descending, and the ground was getting wetter and the vegetation thicker until it presented a wall of green splashed with red-tipped leaves, beautiful flowers yellow and white and violet, and intensely green knobby vines hanging from tree limbs like pea-beaded curtains. Peter had seen none of these plants in the jungle below the plateau, and could not remember seeing them in the books his father had brought.

New plants, new animals; he thought of the Charles Knight paintings he had seen in New York and tried to imagine them come to life. The forest was not static; it had changed, evolved, in the tens of millions of years since its isolation.

How many naturalists had come here, desperate to make their reputations by charting and collecting and classifying? Peter thought there had to be thousands of new species waiting to be discovered. Then, looking at Billie's back as the Indian hacked a path through the growth, he understood what Billie meant. I'm thinking like a white man--which is what I am, of course, and there's no shame in that, I hope. But can I really see the forest for what it is?

"How do Indians think?" Peter asked as they rested beside a small waterfall. Brilliant green and red butterflies played around them, bigger than Peter's hands put together.

"Like people," Billie said. He sniffed the air and leaned back on folded arms. A hummingbird the size of a pigeon flapped ponderously around their heads before flexing and buzzing off through the jungle.

"Whites think like people, too, I suppose," Peter said. He looked up at the vine-draped trees rising over them like the nave of a green cathedral.

"We think likemy people," Billie said, clearly not comfortable with this talk.

"That's what I want to know. How do you think differently from me?"

"When I find Odosha's foot and eat it . . . Then I will think differently. Like my ancestors when the best of them, the heroes, came here."

"Odosha again," Peter said. He sniffed. "What's his foot?"

"Hard . . ." Billie held his hands out flat beside his ribs. "On a tree, blue as moonlight, wide as arms wide." Billie showed his teeth and gave a shiver of his head. "Not for whites. Kill you if you eat it."

Peter wondered if he meant a giant tree fungus. "But it won't killyou?"

"Hope not," Billie said. "I always thought people were pretty much alike, deep down," Peter said, and then was embarrassed by his presumption.

"Um," Billie said.

Twilight was coming and the forest was getting very dark. Peter got up to walk a few steps and pee. He was unzipping his pants when he saw something pale glisten under a broad, spiky-leafed succulent. When he was finished, he zipped up and knelt to look, but still couldn't make out the object in the gloom. He reached beneath the plant and touched something hard and pointed, grasped it, and pulled it easily from the loam. Clumps of dirt fell away. It was bigger than he expected.

Peter stood and turned it in his hands, realizing it was a bone, the jaw of some animal. He touched the teeth and then froze. It was human. With a shocked cry, he dropped it.

A few yards away, Billie stooped and pulled a mold-encrusted cloth belt from the dirt. At the end of the belt dangled a brass buckle green with tarnish.

"Probably white," Billie said. "Not my father. Not yours, either."

Chapter Five

Rain pattered down through the forest all night. Something large passed within a few yards of them, but Peter, wide awake in the blackness, could see nothing and smell nothing. Whatever it was, it was not interested in fresh meat. As light filtered through the canopy and a thick fog broke, Peter rose and stretched. He had slept little. His bones popped like firecrackers and every muscle in his body ached. Billie was nowhere to be seen.

Nearby he found trampled bushes and deep, broad tracks in the earth, but the mucky damp soil had filled in behind the creature, obliterating details.

Billie returned a few minutes later. "Sammy went by last night," he said. "He does not know how to live in the forest. He is as lost as you and I."

Peter wished they could find the centrosaur. It would be like finding an old friend--not as good as finding Anthony, Ray, and OBie, but to come so close . . .

"Maybe he's not far."

"I found a trail maybe from your father," Billie said. "I show where I think they go."

They ate more yuca and Billie led Peter toward a broader stream, where three creeks joined. There, on a sandy bank by the water, he showed Peter bootprints. "They are going north, like us," Billie said.

Peter touched the prints. "We can follow them."

"They go along this river. You follow. I will go another way."

Peter thought about arguing with Billie and decided that would be entirely too white a thing to do. "If you have to," Peter said.

Billie nodded. "You find your father and the others and go back. You do not belong here." "Don't I know it," Peter said.

"I will learn whether I belong," Billie said, looking down at the stream swirling beyond the mud and sand bank. "You take this. I go naked to steal Odosha's magic."