|
Jurassic Park: X-Factor (Chapter Eleven – At the End of the Day)
By drucifer67
Ian was on his bunk, lying flat on his back and imagining fractal patterns in the stucco ceiling, when Bradford opened the door and quietly entered the room. He crossed silently to the corner and sat in the secured chair. He waited for Malcolm to speak first, but Malcolm was making every effort to pretend that no one was there.
It was a staring contest, but in the end it was Bradford who blinked. “Good Morning, Dr. Malcolm.”
Ian said nothing.
“Doctor, I can’t stress to you enough how important it is—“
“Please,” Malcolm cut in, “spare me the rhetoric, and the mock concern as well.”
“I assure you, Dr. Malcolm, my concern is genuine.”
“Just a public servant, doing your bit for God and country.”
“Something like that. I’ve served for so long I don’t know what else to do.”
Malcolm sat up suddenly. “You really think, ah, that you’re serving? Serving anyone other than Eichmann, that is?”
“I don’t serve Eichmann,” Bradford replied coolly. “I work for the United States Government. My job is to protect its people—“
“The way you’re protecting me,” Ian interrupted. “Protecting me from dangerous UV rays, and, and certainly you’re helping me lower my intake of cholesterol.”
“Depriving you of meals was not my idea.”
“That’s what they said at Nuremberg,” Ian countered. “Your involvement makes you accountable. I’m imprisoned without warrant. The Constitution of the United States is supposed to prevent this sort of thing. You’re torturing the people you claim to be protecting.”
Bradford stood. “Sometimes civil rights have to be shelved when dealing with subversives.”
“Subversives? Subversives? So now I’m a secret agent? You’re as deluded as the rest of the goons here, ah, perhaps even more so, because at least they seem to be aware that they’re stepping all over the civil liberties of everyone they come in contact with.”
Bradford stood and crossed to the door. “Dr. Malcolm, you have no idea how important our work is here—“
“Important,” Ian echoed. “Of that I have no doubt. But important to whom, that, that remains the question. You honestly believe, ah, Bradford, that what you’re doing here is somehow a service to your country?”
Bradford said nothing for a moment. He stood regarding Malcolm, letting the silence reel out. Then he reached down and tugged at the leg of his trousers, revealing the braces Ian had noticed earlier. “Baghdad,” he said simply. “I flew Blackhawks in the Gulf. My bird had a dozen soldiers on board when we took a hit over Baghdad. I managed to get it on the ground, and I was the only one who had to be dragged out. I finished my tour in a hospital, getting this rebuilt.”
Malcolm kept eye contact but did not speak.
Bradford slid his security card through the reader and opened the door. As he stepped outside, he turned back to Malcolm. “Please don’t presume to tell me what it means to serve my country, Doctor.”
“We should stop here for the night,” Grant said solemnly. “It gets dark pretty quickly here.” These were the first words that had been spoken since leaving the site of the trike attack, and the sound of a human voice sounded somehow foreign after such a long period of silence.
Rick nodded and slipped his backpack off his shoulder. Carlisle, Ramirez, and Markinson followed his lead.
Lex made it a point to walk past the group, forcing a little extra spring into her step, before dropping her gear on the ground. The symbolism wasn’t lost on Rick, who smiled just a little. “Okay,” he said, “I admit. I didn’t think you could do it.”
“Do what?” Lex asked innocently.
“Walk the rest of us into the ground, like you said you were going to do.”
“Is that an apology?” Lex asked, raising one eyebrow.
Rick looked around at the other members of the team, who were all looking back at him. “Maybe,” he said at last.
Lex rolled her eyes and sat down amid the jumble of her equipment. She should have known there was no way to win with people like Rick. No matter how wrong he was, he was the type to be right.
“First things first,” Carlisle said, “we need to get up off the ground.”
Grant agreed. “We should find trees with roomy structure in the forks. I think it would also be in everyone’s interest if we stayed close together, at least within earshot.”
“Absolutely right,” Carlisle concurred. His southern accent seemed heavier now than before. “I’m also going to scout out a few yards in every direction for signs of cow trails.”
Grant turned slowly to face the hunter. “Cow trails?”
Carlisle smiled at Grant. “That’s what we call them. Any sign of traffic. Big plant-eaters tend to wander along the same trails to get from place to place. A flattened-out trail where the plants are all cut short is what I call a cow trail. Anyhow, the point is, where the plant-eaters hang out, the predators follow.”
Grant nodded. “Good thinking,” he allowed.
“For the moment,” Rick added, “I’d suggest we all grab a bite to eat.”
Carlisle agreed. “The rest of you do that. I’ll be back in a few minutes to join you, as soon as I’ve made sure we’re not in the middle of anyone’s hunting grounds.” He turned and started off into the jungle, his rifle still on his shoulder.
“Wait,” Grant called after him. He stood and trotted over to where Carlisle had stopped. “I’ll go along. It’s not a good idea for anyone to wander off alone on this island.”
Carlisle nodded, then turned back to the group. “Rick, watch the clock. If we’re not back in ten, button this place up and get to the treetops.”
Will Bradford stood in the elevator car, talking to a pocket-sized tape recorder.
“Make contact with Levy about the Wallace situation, he should have checked in this afternoon. Consider placing a hot food cart outside Malcolm’s room tomorrow, although it may be a little early yet.”
He stopped and pressed the pause button. Malcolm. That was quickly becoming a sore subject. He was supposed to be an eccentric mathematician, and not much more, but he had turned out to be the type Bradford disliked—that occasional subject who refuses to cooperate under any circumstances. Some were like that, and Bradford had met quite a number of them during his career. There were people who, no matter what the question, would dummy up and refuse to answer if they knew it was a government agent asking. Malcolm’s stubborn refusal to play ball was painting Bradford in an unfavorable light with Eichmann, who was miserably impatient. Bradford had known Eichmann mostly by hearsay, before this situation arose, and was discovering much to his dismay that the man’s reputation for being a ruthless taskmaster was actually somewhat understated.
He resumed recording. “Kill Ian Malcolm with a blunt object, and buy Eichmann some nicotine gum,” he said, and hit the ‘off’ switch. He dropped the recorder in the inside pocket of his jacket and strode toward his parked Ford.
He opened the driver’s door, pitched his briefcase casually onto the passenger’s seat, and slid in behind the wheel. He reached to put the key into the ignition, but halfway there his hand faltered and he froze.
Eichmann was standing in front of the car.
Bradford let the window down. In Eichmann’s hand was a sheaf of papers, which he thrust through the opening. “Thought you might want to see this tonight, rather than wait until morning.”
“What is it?” Bradford asked. He could hear the shakiness of his own voice, but was powerless to stop it. Eichmann’s sudden appearance had spooked him. “Report from Levy, out on the West Coast,” Eichmann replied. “Wallace gave him the slip.”
Bradford lay his head back against the seat and closed his eyes, envisioning his reputation as an agent sprouting wings and flying away. He let out a heavy sigh.
“Son of a bitch disappeared like smoke,” Eichmann continued. “Said he needed to get some things from his office and inform his second in command, and never came back. Levy was sure he had bought their cover story.”
“It seems not.”
“Wallace is slick,” Eichmann said. “We knew he would pull this. They’ve pulled two more teams off of low-priority situations to help them look for him.”
Bradford nodded. “Good. I’ll get in touch with Levy when I get home, and put together a plan, get Wallace back in the net.”
“That’s what I would do,” Eichmann agreed, “but I strongly suspect we’ll never see Charles Sinclair Wallace again.”
Bradford looked at Eichmann, puzzled.
“Levy’s people alerted him. I don’t know how, but he’s got his wind up. He’ll resurface, someday, with a new name. Maybe a toupee over that ass-bald head. But my gut tells me Wallace smelled something and went underground.”
Bradford considered this new wrinkle for a moment.
“That’s all I have,” Eichmann said, turning to leave. A few steps from the car, he stopped.
“You know,” he said without turning around, “I’ve tried nicotine gum, it doesn’t work. I do like the blunt object idea, though.”
Bradford watched, motionless, as Eichmann unhurriedly made his way back across the parking garage and disappeared into the elevator.
Carlisle proceeded through the dense undergrowth slowly and methodically, with Alan close on his heels. The hunter studied the ground, the plants, and the trees—everything within view, searching for signs of animal activity. Grant mainly kept an eye on the fringe areas, scanning for movement and hoping not to see any.
Carlisle knelt among the vegetation, studying something. After a moment, he motioned for Grant to join him there.
“What kind of prints would you say these are?” Carlisle asked.
Alan knelt, looking over the impressions in the soft earth. “Sauropod…no, ornithopod of some sort,” he pronounced immediately. “Some smaller prints, from the forelimbs, but those are intermittent. This is a facultative quadruped.”
“A who?”
“An animal that normally walks on its hind legs, but sometimes goes on all fours. Definitely not a carnivorous theropod. It’s a three-toed animal, but look at the way the toes are spread. And if you look closely, there’s a faint, half-moon impression that would indicate webbing between the toes. I’m going to say this is a hadrosaur.”
“Looks like only one animal,” Carlisle added. “Probably nothing to worry about. Predators tend to go where there are plenty of food animals.”
“Still, where there is one, there could be more. Many of the dinosaurs on this island have been observed engaging in herd behavior.”
“No other tracks, though,” Carlisle asserted. “At least not close by. I’m guessing this one was lost, or a loner.”
Grant nodded. “It’s possible. Likely, even, since there are no accompanying tracks.”
Carlisle came to his feet and took a few steps in the direction the tracks seemed to be heading. He knelt again, spreading the low growth with his hands. He seemed to find nothing, because he stood immediately and repeated the process: three or four steps, kneel, investigate.
This went on for several minutes before he called for Grant again.
Grant came up alongside Carlisle, but at first could see nothing. Then Carlisle pointed to a low depression, about eight feet across. In the center of the depression, the vegetation had been cleared and the earth had been carefully shaped into a volcano-like bowl. In the bowl was a clutch of eleven eggs, carefully arranged to stand nearly upright in a spiral pattern.
“What kind of eggs are they?” Carlisle asked.
“No way of really knowing,” Grant said apologetically. “We can only speculate on eggs, in the majority of instances. Even skeletal fossils found near to nests don’t necessarily prove the species. The spiral arrangement is characteristic of ornithischians, but it would be nearly impossible to narrow it down further…and since ornithischians account for the vast majority of dinosaurs, I’m afraid that really doesn’t narrow it down at all.”
“If you saw the momma that laid those eggs, you could tell what it was, though, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“And if they hatched right now, you could tell what they were?”
“Almost certainly,” Grant answered, puzzled. He had no idea where this was going.
Carlisle stood and crossed to the nest, where he selected an egg. He brought it back to where Alan waited, and knelt in front of him.
“Now, wait just a minute,” Grant urged. “We might not want to handle these eggs. Parental instinct may be quite well-developed in some of these animals.”
But Carlisle was already rapping the egg against the ground.
“Hey!” Grant protested. “What are you doing?”
The eggshell burst, and Carlisle peeled the top one-third of the egg off, casting it aside. He thrust his fingers inside the egg, scooping out the partially developed embryo. He held it flat in his palm and offered it to Alan for inspection.
At first, Alan didn’t look at the embryo; he was still staring, incredulous, at Carlisle.
“What?” Carlisle asked.
Grant didn’t answer, but instead turned his attention to the mess in Carlisle’s hand.
“Ornithopod,” Grant said matter-of-factly. He studied the embryo for a moment, then added, “Hadrosaurid. Looks like a crested hadrosaurid, but it’s hard to tell since the embryo isn’t fully developed. If I had to make an educated guess, based on this and the tracks, I’d say Parasaurolophus.”
“What do they eat?”
“Plants, mostly, but they do enjoy the occasional redneck,” Grant answered flatly, and turned away.
“Where are you going?” Carlisle demanded.
“Back to camp,” Grant answered. “Watching you butcher an unborn herbivore made me suddenly hungry, I guess.”
Carlisle raced to catch up. “What the hell is the problem?”
“I question the necessity of destroying that egg,” Grant answered.
“We had to know whether it was a predator,” Carlisle explained. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I value my life over any of these dinosaurs, even the nice guys. I don’t think the world’s gonna stop turning just because I aborted one poor little…Pussy-for-all-of-us, or whatever the hell you call it.”
Grant stopped suddenly, turning on Carlisle and thrusting a finger in his face. “Killing the animal is not the issue. I understand your motivation for doing it. What I would have hoped to have gotten across by now is that we simply cannot indiscriminately alter their environments in ways that might effect their behavior. Parasaurolophus is a relatively gentle herbivore, but it’s also a family-oriented creature. Now, since your hunting experience has undoubtedly offered you some insight into animal behavior, perhaps you can tell me what you surmise by the amount of care that was taking in building that nest and arranging those eggs.”
Carlisle stared at Grant, too stunned to answer.
“Since you’re a little slow today, I’ll help you. The dinosaur that laid those eggs is an attentive mother. She’s going to come back to that nest and discover an egg missing. She’s probably going to smell us on every plant and tree between here and camp, and if she’s half the mother I suspect she might be, she’s going to track that smell, looking for her egg.”
Carlisle opened his mouth to argue, but Grant gave him no opportunity.
“Now, Parasaurolophus is a blunt-clawed, peg-toothed dinosaur. There is no way on earth she’s going to eat anyone, like the predators you’re so obsessed with, but you must bear in mind that the adults can weigh in at up to five tons. I’d rather not upset her, if it’s all the same to you.”
Grant knew that he was overreacting, and that his description of what the mother hadrosaur might do was a complete fairy tale. There was really no way of knowing whether the animal would even notice the missing egg—and if it did, it was anybody’s guess as to whether she would search for it. And if she did, Alan felt certain that the human presence would intimidate her, if the search took her that far.
What he was really angry about was Carlisle’s lack of respect for nature. He had desecrated the nest and mutilated the egg with no regard for the animals, and with no thought of what the consequences might be. Alan didn’t care for it, and the possibility that Carlisle might just as easily have treated the eggs of a violent predator in the same manner made the whole incident seem all the more foolish.
“So what was I supposed to do, go back to camp not knowing what kind of animal laid those eggs? I’m sorry, Grant, but my survival instinct is too strong for that. I intend to know what’s going on around me.”
“What’s going on around you,” Grant explained, “depends on you, as well. There is a delicate balance here, and our interactions with the environment could easily upset that balance. Our lives could very well depend on our leaving nature alone.”
1/18/2003 11:57:32 PM
Comment on this fan fiction!
|
|
|
