"Marty," Levine said coldly. "I am never thrown off "
"Well, of course, I didn't mean that - "
"And I am telling you, this is not a lizard," Levine said.
"I'm sorry," Guitierrez said, shaking his head. "But I can't agree."
Back at the white helicopter, the men were huddled together, putting on white surgical masks.
"I'm not asking you to agree," Levine said. He turned back to the carcass. "The diagnosis is settled easily enough, all we need do is excavate the head, or for that matter any of the limbs, for example this thigh here, which I believe - "
He broke off, and leaned closer. He peered at the back of the thigh.
"What is it?" Guiltierrez said.
"Give me your knife."
"Why?" Guitierrez said.
"Just give it to me."
Guitierrez fished out his pocketknife, put the handle in Levine's outstretched hand. Levine peered steadily at the carcass. "I think you will find this interesting."
"What?"
"Right along the posterior dermal line, there is a - "
Suddenly, they heard shouting on the beach, and looked up to see the men from the white helicopter running down the beach toward them. They carried tanks on their backs, and were shouting in Spanish.
"What are they saying?" Levine asked, frowning.
Guitierrez sighed. "They're saying to get back."
"Tell them we're busy," Levine said, and bent over the carcass again.
But the men kept shouting, and suddenly there was a roaring sound, and Levine looked up to see flamethrowers igniting, big red jets of flame roaring out in the evening light. He ran around the carcass toward the men, shouting, "No! No!"
But the men paid no attention.
He shouted, "No, this is a priceless - "
The first of the uniformed men grabbed Levine, and threw him roughly to the sand.
"What the hell are you doing?" Levine yelled, scrambling to his feet. But even as he said it, he saw it was too late, the first of the flames had reached the carcass, blackening the skin, igniting the pockets of methane with a blue whump! The smoke from the carcass began to rise thickly into the sky.
"Stop it! Stop it!" Levine turned to Guitierrez. "Make them stop it!"
But Guitierrez was not moving, he was staring at the carcass. Consumed by flames, the torso crackled and the fat sputtered, and then as the skin burned away, the black, flat ribs of the skeleton were revealed, and then the whole torso turned, and suddenly the neck of the animal swung up, surrounded by flames, moving as the skin contracted. And inside the flames Levine saw a long pointed snout, and rows of sharp predatory teeth, and hollow eye sockets, the whole thing burning like some medieval dragon rising in flames up into the sky.
L
evine sat in the bar of the San Jose airport, nursing a beer, waiting for his plane back to the States. Guitierrez sat beside him at a small table, not saying much. An awkward silence had fallen for the last few minutes. Guitierrez stared at Levine's backpack, on the floor by his feet. It was specially constructed of dark-green Gore-Tex, with extra pockets on the outside for all the electronic gear.
"Pretty nice pack," Guitierrez said. "Where'd you get that, anyway? Looks like a Thorne pack."
Levine sipped his beer. "It is."
"Nice," Guitierrez said, looking at it. "What've you got there in the top flap, a satellite phone? And a GPS? Boy, what won't they think of next. Pretty slick. Must have cost you a - "
"Marty," Levine said, in an exasperated tone. "Cut the crap. Are you going to tell me, or not?"
"Tell you what?"
"I want to know what the hell's going on here."
"Richard, look, I'm sorry if you - "
"No," Levine said, cutting him off. "That was a very important specimen on that beach, Marty, and it was destroyed. I don't understand why you let it happen."
Guitierrez sighed. He looked around at the tourists at the other tables and said, "This has to be in confidence, okay?"
"All right."
"It's a big problem here."
"What is."
"There have been, uh…aberrant forms…turning up on the coast ever so often. It's been going on for several years now."
"'Aberrant forms?"' Levine repeated, shaking his head in disbelief
"That's the official term for these specimens," Guitierrez said. "No one in the government is willing to be more precise. It started about five years ago. A number of animals were discovered up in the mountains, near a remote agricultural station that was growing test varieties of soy beans."
"Soy beans," Levine repeated.
Guitierrez nodded. "Apparently these animals are attracted to beans, and certain grasses. The assumption is that they have a great need for the amino acid lysine in their diets. But nobody is really sure. Perhaps they just have a taste for certain crops - "
"Marty," Levine said. "I don't care if they have a taste for beer and pretzels. The only important question is: where did the animals come from?"
"Nobody knows," Guitierrez said.
Levine let that pass, for the moment. "What happened to those other animals?"
"They were all destroyed. And to my knowledge, no others were found for years afterward. But now it seems to be starting again. In the last year, we have found the remains of four more animals, including the one you saw today."
"And what was done?"
"The, ah, aberrant forms are always destroyed. Just as you saw. From the beginning, the government's taken every possible step to make sure nobody finds out about it. A few years back, some North American journalists began reporting there was something wrong on one island, Isla Nublar. Menendez invited a bunch of journalists down for a special tour of the island - and proceeded to fly them to the wrong island. They never knew the difference. Stuff like that. I mean, the government's very serious about this."
"Why?"
"They're worried."
"Worried? Why should they be worried about - "
Guitierrez held up his hand, shifted in his chair, moved closer. "Disease, Richard."
"Disease?"
"Yeah. Costa Rica has one of the best health-care systems in the world," Guitierrez said. "The epidemiologists have been tracking some weird type of encephalitis that seems to be on the increase, particularly along the coast."
"Encephalitis'? Of what origin? Viral?"
Guitierrez shook his head. "No causative agent has been found."
"Marty…"
"I'm telling you, Richard. Nobody knows. It's not a virus, because antibody titres don't go up, and white-cell differentials don't change. It's not bacterial, because nothing has ever been cultered. It's a complete mystery. All the epidemiologists know is that it seems to affect primarily rural farmers: people who are around animals and livestock. And it's a true encephalitis-splitting headaches, mental confusion, fever, delirium."
"Mortality?"
"So far it seems to be self-limited, lasts about three weeks. But even so it's got the government worried. This country is dependent on tourism, Richard. Nobody wants talk of unknown diseases."
"So they think the encephalitis is related to these, ah, aberrant forms?"
He shrugged. "Lizards carry lots of viral diseases," Guitierrez said. "They're a known vector. So it's not unreasonable, there might be a connection."
"But you said this isn't a viral disease."
"Whatever it is. They think it's related."
Levine said, "All the more reason to find out where these lizards are coming from. Surely they must have searched…"
"Searched?" Guiiticrrez said, with a laugh. "Of course they've searched. They've gone over every square inch of this country, again and again. They've sent out dozens of search parties - I've led several myself. They've done aerial surveys. They've had overflights of the jungle. They've had overflights of the offshore islands. That in itself is a big job. There are quite a few islands, you know, particularly along the west coast. Hell, they've even searched the ones that are privately owned."
"Are there privately owned islands?" Levine asked.
"A few. Three or four. Like Isla Nublar - it was leased to an American company, InGen, for years."
"But you said that island was searched…"
"Thoroughly searched. Nothing there."
"And the others?"
"Well, let's see," Guitierrez said, ticking them off on his fingers. "There's Isla Talamanca, on the east coast; they've got a Club Med there. There's Sorna, on the west coast; it's leased to a German mining company. And there's Morazan, up north; it's actually owned by a wealthy Costa Rican family. And there may be another island I've forgotten about."
"And the searches found what?"
"Nothing," Guitierrez said. "They've found nothing at all. So the assumption is that the animals are coming from some location deep in the jungle. And that's why we haven't been able to find it so far."
Levine grunted. "In that case, lots of luck,"
"I know," Guitierrez said. "Rain forest is an incredibly good environment for concealment. A search party could pass within ten yards of a large animal and never see it. And even the most advanced remote sensing technology doesn't help much, because there are multiple layers to penetrate-clouds, tree canopy, lower-level flora. There's just no way around it: almost anything could be hiding in the rain forest. Anyway," he said, "the government's frustrated. And, of course, the government is not the only interested party."
Levine looked up sharply. "Oh?"
"Yes. For some reason, there's been a lot of interest in these animals."
"What sort of interest?" Levine said, as casually as he could.
"Last fall, the government issued a permit to a team of botanists from Berkeley to do an aerial survey of the jungle canopy in the central highlands. The survey had been going on for a month when a dispute arose a bill for aviation fuel, or something like that. Anyway, a bureaucrat in San Jose called Berkeley to complain. And Berkeley said they'd never heard of this survey team. Meantime, the team fled the country."
"So nobody knows who they really were?"
"No'. Then last winter, a couple of Swiss geologists showed up to collect gas samples from offshore islands, as part of a study, they said, of volcanic activity in Central America. The offshore islands are all volcanic, and most of them are still active to some degree, so it seemed like a reasonable request. But it turned out the 'geologists' really worked for an American genetics company called Biosyn, and they were looking for, uh, large animals on the islands."
"Why would a biotech company be interested?" Levine said. "it makes no sense."
"Maybe not to you and me," Guitierrez said, "but Biosyn's got a particularly unsavory reputation. Their head of research is a guy named Lewis Dodgson."
"Oh yeah," Levine said. "I know. He's the guy who ran that rabies vaccine test in Chile a few years back. The one where they exposed farmers to rabies but didn't tell them they were doing it."
"That's him. He also started test-marketing a genetically engineered potato in supermarkets without telling anybody they were altered. Gave kids low-grade diarrhea; couple of them ended up in the hospital. After that, the company had to hire George Baselton to fix their image."
"Seems like everybody hires Baselton," Levine said,
Guitierrez shrugged. "The big-name university professors consult, these days. It's part of the deal. And Baselton is Regis Professor of Biology. The company needed him to clean up their mess, because Dodgson has a habit of breaking the law. Dodgson has people on his payroll all around the world. Steals other companies' research, the whole bit. They say Biosyn's the only genetics company with more lawyers than scientists."
"And why were they interested in Costa Rica?" Levine asked.
Guitierrez shrugged. "I don't know, but the whole attitude toward research has changed, Richard. It's very noticeable here. Costa Rica has one of the richest ecologies in the world. Half a million species in twelve distinct environmental habitats. Five percent of all the species on the planet are represented here. This country has been a biological research center for years, and I can tell you, things have changed. In the old days, the people who came here were dedicated scientists with a passion to learn about something for its own sake-howler monkeys, or polistine wasps, or the sombrilla plant. These people had chosen their field because they cared about it. They certainly weren't going to get rich. But now, everything in the biosphere is potentially valuable. Nobody knows where the next drug is coming from, so drug companies fund all sorts of research. Maybe a bird egg has a protein that makes it waterproof. Maybe a spider produces a peptide that inhibits blood clotting. Maybe the waxy surface of a fern contains a painkiller. It happens often enough that attitudes toward research have changed. People aren't studying the natural world any more, they're mining it. It's a looter mentality. Anything new or unknown is automatically of interest, because it might have value. It might be worth a fortune."
Guitierrez drained his beer. "The world," he said, is turned upside down. And the fact is that a lot of people want to know what these aberrant animals represent - and where they come from."
The loudspeaker called Levine's flight. Both men stood up from the table. Guiitierrez said, "You'll keep all this to yourself? I mean, what you saw today."
"To be quite honest," Levine said, "I don't know what I saw today. It could have been anything."
Guitierrez grinned. "Safe flight, Richard."
"Take care, Marty."
H
is backpack slung over his shoulder, Levine walked toward the departure lounge. He turned to wave goodbye to Guitierrez, but his friend was already heading out the door, raising his arm to wave for a taxi. Levine shrugged, turned back.
Directly ahead was the Customs desk, travelers lined up to have their passports stamped. He was booked on a night flight to San Francisco, with a long stopover in Mexico City; not many people were queuing up. He probably had time to call his office, and leave word for his secretary, Linda, that he would be on the flight; and perhaps, he thought, he should also call Malcolm. Looking around, he saw a row of phones marked ICT TELEFONOS INTFRNATIONAL along the wall to his right, but there were only a few, and all were in use. He had better use the satellite phone in his backpack, he thought, as he swung the pack off his shoulder, and perhaps it would be-
He paused, frowning.
He looked back at the wall.
Four people were using the phones. The first was a blonde woman in shorts and a halter top, bouncing a young sunburned child in her arms as she talked. Next to her stood a bearded man in a safari jacket, who glanced repeatedly at his gold Rolex watch. Then there was a grayhaired, grandmotherly woman talking in Spanish, while her two fullgrown sons stood by, nodding emphatically.
And the last person was the helicopter pilot. He had removed his uniform jacket, and was standing in short sleeves and tie. He was turned away, facing the wall, shoulders hunched.
Levine moved closer, and heard the pilot speaking in English. Levine set his pack down and beiit over it, pretending to adjust the straps while he listened. The pilot was still turned away from him.
He heard the pilot say, "No, no, Professor. It is not that way. No. Then there was a pause. "No," the pilot said. "I am telling to you, no. I am sorry, Professor Baselton, but this is not known, It is an island, but which one…We must wait again for more. No, he leaves tonight. No, I think he does not know anything, and no pictures. No. I understand. Adios.
Levine ducked his head as the pilot walked briskly toward the LACSA desk at the other end of the airport.
What the hell? he thought.
It is an island, but which one…
How did they know it was an island? Levine himself was still not sure of that. And he had been working intensively on these finds, day and night, trying to put it together. Where they had come from. Why it was happening.
He walked around the corner, out of sight, and pulled out the little satellite phone. He dialed it quickly, calling a number in San Francisco.
The call went through, rapidly clicking as it linked with the satellite. It began to ring. There was a beep. An electronic voice said, "Please enter your access code."
Levine punched in a six-digit number.
There was another beep. The electronic voice said, "Leave your message."
"I'm calling," Levine said, "with the results of the trip. Single specimen, not in good shape. Location: BB-17 on your map. That's far south, which fits all of our hypotheses. I wasn't able to make a precise identification before they burned the specimen. But my guess is that it was an ornitholestes. As you know, this animal is not on the list -a highly sigificant finding."
He glanced around, but no one was near him, no one was paying attention. "Furthermore, the lateral femur was cut in a deep gash. This is extremely disturbing." He hesitated, not wanting to say too much. "And I am sending back a sample that requires close examination. I also think some other people are interested. Anyway, whatever is going on down here is new, Ian. There haven't been any specimens for over a year, and now they're showing up again. Something new is happening. And we don't understand it at all."
Or do we? Levine thought. He pressed the disconnect, turned the phone off, and replaced it in the other pocket of his backpack. Maybe, he thought, we know more than we realize. He looked thoughtfully toward the departure gate. It was time to catch his flight.