Exactly the sort of thing that Ian hated, she thought. “How do you know Ian?”
“Oh, we go way back,” Dodgson said.
She noticed his vagueness. “How far?”
“Back to the days of the park.”
“The park,” she said.
He nodded. “Did he ever tell you how he hurt his leg?”
“No,” she said. “He would never talk about it. He just said it happened on a consulting job that had . . . I don’t know. Some sort of trouble. Was it a park?”
“Yes, in a way,” Dodgson said, staring out at the ocean. After a moment, he shrugged. “And what about you? How do you know him?”
“He was one of my thesis readers. I’m an ethologist. I study large mammals in African grassland ecosystems. East Africa. Carnivores, in particular.”
“Carnivores?”
“I’ve been studying hyenas,” she said. “Before that, lions.”
“For a long time?”
“Almost ten years, now. Six years continuously, since my doctorate.”
“Interesting,” Dodgson said, nodding. “And so did you come here all the way from Africa?”
“Yes, from Seronera. In Tanzania.”
Dodgson nodded vaguely. He looked past her shoulder toward the island. “What do you know. Looks like the weather may clear, after all.”
She turned and saw streaks of blue in the thinning clouds overhead. The sun was trying to break through. The sea was calmer. And she was surprised to see the island was much closer. She could clearly see the cliffs, rising above the seas. The cliffs were reddish-gray volcanic rock, very sheer.
“In Tanzania,” Dodgson said. “You run a large research team?”
“No. I work alone.”
“No students?” he said.
“I’m afraid not. It’s because my work just isn’t very glamorous. The big savannah carnivores in Africa are primarily nocturnal. So my research is mostly conducted at night.”
“Must be hard on your husband.”
“Oh, I’m not married,” she said, with a little shrug.
“I’m surprised,” he said. “After all, a beautiful woman like you . . .”
“I never had time,” she said quickly. To change the subject, she said, “Where do you land on this island?”
Dodgson turned to look. They were now close enough to the island to see the waves crashing, high and white, against the base of the cliffs. They were only a mile or two away.
“It’s an unusual island,” Dodgson said. “This whole region of central America is volcanic. There are something like thirty active volcanoes between Mexico and Colombia. All these offshore islands were at one time active volcanoes, part of the central chain. But unlike the mainland, the islands are now dormant. Haven’t erupted for a thousand years or so.”
“So we’re seeing the outside of the crater?”
“Exactly. The cliffs are all the result of erosion from rainfall, but the ocean erodes the base of the cliffs, too. Those flat sections on the cliff you see are where the ocean cut in at the bottom, and huge areas of the cliff face were undermined, and just cleaved, falling straight down into the sea. It’s all soft volcanic rock.”
“And so you land . . .”
“There are several places on the windward side where the ocean has cut caves into the cliff. And at two of those places, the caves meet rivers flowing out from the interior. So they’re passable.” He pointed ahead. “You see there, you can just now see one of the caves.”
Sarah Harding saw a dark irregular opening cut into the base of the cliff. All around it, the waves crashed, plumes of white water rising fifty feet up into the air.
“You’re going to take this boat into that cave there?”
“If the weather holds, yes.” Dodgson turned away. “Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it looks. Anyway, you were saying. About Africa. When did you leave Africa?”
“Right after Doc Thorne called. He said he was going with Ian to rescue Richard, and asked if I wanted to come.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said I’d think about it.”
Dodgson frowned. “You didn’t tell him you were coming?”
“No. Because I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I mean, I’m busy. I have my work. And it’s a long way.”
“For an old lover,” Dodgson said, nodding sympathetically.
She sighed. “Well. You know. Ian.”
“Yes, I know Ian,” Dodgson said. “Quite a character.”
“That’s one way to put it,” she said.
There was an awkward silence. Dodgson cleared his throat. “I’m confused,” he said. “Who exactly did you tell you were coming here?”
“Nobody,” she said. “I just jumped on the next plane and came.”
“But what about your university, your colleagues . . .”
She shrugged. “There wasn’t time. And as I said, I work alone.” She looked again at the island. The cliffs rose high above the boat. They were only a few hundred yards away. The cave appeared much larger now, but the waves crashed high on either side. She shook her head. “It looks pretty rough.”
“Don’t worry,” Dodgson said. “See? The captain’s already making for it. We’ll be perfectly safe, once we’re passing through. And then . . . It should be very exciting.”
The boat rolled and dipped in the sea, an uncertain motion. She gripped the railing. Beside her, Dodgson grinned. “See what I mean? Exciting, isn’t it?” He seemed suddenly energized, almost agitated. His body became tense; he rubbed his hands together. “No need to worry, Ms. Harding, I can’t allow anything to happen to—”
She didn’t know what he was talking about, but before she could reply, the nose of the boat dipped again, kicking up spray, and she stumbled a little. Dodgson bent over quickly—apparently to steady her—but it seemed as if something went wrong—his body struck against her legs, then lifted—and then another wave crashed over them and she felt her body twist and she screamed and clutched at the railing. But it was all happening too fast, the world upended and swirled around her, her head clanged once on the railing and then she was tumbling, falling through space. She saw the peeling paint on the hull of the boat sliding past her, she saw the green ocean rush up toward her, and then she was shocked with the sudden stinging cold as she plunged into the rough, heaving sea, and sank beneath the waves, into darkness.
The Valley
“This is going extremely well,” Levine said, rubbing his hands together. “Far beyond my expectations, I must say. I couldn’t be more pleased.”
He was standing in the high hide with Thorne, Eddie, Malcolm, and the kids, looking down on the valley floor below. Everyone was sweating inside the little observation hut; the midday air was still and hot. Around them, the grassy meadow was deserted; most of the dinosaurs had moved beneath the trees, into the cool of the shade.
The exception was the herd of apatosaurs, which had left the trees to return to the river, where they were now drinking once again. The huge animals clustered fairly tightly around the water’s edge. In the same vicinity, but more spread out, were the high-crested parasaurolophasaurs; these somewhat smaller dinosaurs positioned themselves near the apatosaur herd.
Thorne wiped sweat out of his eyes and said, “Why, exactly, are you pleased?”
“Because of what we’re seeing here,” Malcolm said. He glanced at his watch, and wrote an entry in his notebook. “We’re getting the data that I hoped for. It’s very exciting.”
Thorne yawned, sleepy in the heat. “Why is it exciting? The dinosaurs are drinking. What’s the big deal?”
“Drinking again,” Levine corrected him. “For the second time in an hour. At midday. Such fluid intake is highly suggestive of the thermoregulatory strategies these large creatures employ.”
“You mean they drink a lot to stay cool,” Thorne said, always impatient with jargon.
“Yes. Clearly they do. Drink a lot. But in my view, their return to the river may have anothe
r significance entirely.”
“Which is?”
“Come, come,” Levine said, pointing. “Look at the herds. Look how they are arranged spatially. We are seeing something that no one has witnessed before, or even suspected, for dinosaurs. We’re seeing nothing less than inter-species symbiosis.”
“We are?”
“Yes,” Levine said. “The apatosaurs and the parasaurs are together. I saw them together yesterday, too. I’ll bet that they’re always together, when they’re out on the open plain. Undoubtedly you are wondering why.”
“Undoubtedly,” Thorne said.
“The reason,” Levine said, “is that the apatosaurs are very strong but weak-sighted, whereas the parasaurs are smaller, but have very sharp vision. So the two species stay together because they provide a mutual defense. Just the way zebras and baboons stay together on the African plain. Zebras have a good sense of smell, and baboons have good eyesight. Together they’re more effective against predators than either is alone.”
“And you think this is true of the dinosaurs because . . .”
“It’s rather obvious,” Levine said. “Just look at the behavior. When the two herds were alone, each clustered tightly among themselves. But when they’re together, the parasaurs spread out, abandoning their former herd arrangement, to form an outer ring around the apatosaurs. Just as you see them now. That can only mean that individual paras are going to be protected by the apatosaur herd. And vice versa. It can only be a mutual predator defense.”
As they watched, one of the parasaurs lifted its head, and stared across the river. It honked mournfully, a long musical sound. All the other parasaurs looked up and stared, too. The apatosaurs continued to drink at the river, although one or two adults raised their long necks.
In the midday heat, insects buzzed around them. Thorne said, “So where are the predators?”
“Right there,” Malcolm said, pointing toward a stand of trees on the other side of the river, not far from the water.
Thorne looked, and saw nothing.
“Don’t you see them?”
“No.”
“Keep looking. They’re small, lizard-like animals. Dark brown. Raptors,” he said.
Thorne shrugged. He still saw nothing. Standing beside him, Levine began to eat a power bar. Preoccupied with holding the binoculars, he dropped the wrapper on the floor of the hide. Bits of paper fluttered to the ground below.
“How are those things?” Arby said.
“Okay. A little sugary.”
“Got any more?” he said.
Levine rummaged in his pockets and gave him one. Arby broke it in half, and gave half to Kelly. He began to unwrap his half, carefully folding the paper, putting it neatly in his pocket.
“You realize this is all highly significant,” Malcolm said. “For the question of extinction. Already it’s obvious that the extinction of the dinosaurs is a far more complex problem than anyone has recognized.”
“It is?” Arby said.
“Well, consider,” Malcolm said. “All extinction theories are based on the fossil record. But the fossil record doesn’t show the sort of behavior we’re seeing here. It doesn’t record the complexity of groups interacting.”
“Because fossils are just bones,” Arby said.
“Right. And bones are not behavior. When you think about it, the fossil record is like a series of photographs: frozen moments from what is really a moving, ongoing reality. Looking at the fossil record is like thumbing through a family photo album. You know that the album isn’t complete. You know life happens between the pictures. But you don’t have any record of what happens in between, you only have the pictures. So you study them, and study them. And pretty soon, you begin to think of the album not as a series of moments, but as reality itself. And you begin to explain everything in terms of the album, and you forget the underlying reality.
“And the tendency,” Malcolm said, “has been to think in terms of physical events. To assume that some external physical event caused the extinctions. A meteor hits the earth, and changes the weather. Or volcanoes erupt, and change the weather. Or a meteor causes the volcanoes to erupt and change the weather. Or vegetation changes, and species starve and become extinct. Or a new disease arises, and species become extinct. Or a new plant arises, and poisons all the dinosaurs. In every case, what is imagined is some external event. But what nobody imagines is that the animals themselves might have changed—not in their bones, but their behavior. Yet when you look at animals like these, and see how intricately their behavior is interrelated, you realize that a change in group behavior could easily lead to extinction.”
“But why would group behavior change?” Thorne said. “If there wasn’t some external catastrophe to force it, why should the behavior change?”
“Actually,” Malcolm said, “behavior is always changing, all the time. Our planet is a dynamic, active environment. Weather is changing. The land is changing. Continents drift. Oceans rise and fall. Mountains thrust up and erode away. All the organisms on the planet are constantly adapting to those changes. The best organisms are the ones that can adapt most rapidly. That’s why it’s hard to see how a catastrophe that produces a large change could cause extinction, since so much change is occurring all the time, anyway.”
“In that case,” Thorne said, “what causes extinction?”
“Certainly not rapid change alone,” Malcolm said. “The facts tell us that clearly.”
“What facts?”
“After every major environmental change, a wave of extinctions has usually followed—but not right away. Extinctions only occur thousands, or millions of years later. Take the last glaciation in North America. The glaciers descended, the climate changed severely, but animals didn’t die. Only after the glaciers receded, when you’d think things would go back to normal, did lots of species become extinct. That’s when giraffes and tigers and mammoths vanished on this continent. And that’s the usual pattern. It’s almost as if species are weakened by the major change, but die off later. It’s a well-recognized phenomenon.”
“It’s called Softening Up the Beachhead,” Levine said.
“And what’s the explanation for it?”
Levine was silent.
“There is none,” Malcolm said. “It’s a paleontological mystery. But I believe that complexity theory has a lot to tell us about it. Because if the notion of life at the edge of chaos is true, then major change pushes animals closer to the edge. It destabilizes all sorts of behavior. And when the environment goes back to normal, it’s not really a return to normal. In evolutionary terms, it’s another big change, and it’s just too much to keep up with. I believe that new behavior in populations can emerge in unexpected ways, and I think I know why the dinosaurs—”
“What’s that?” Thorne said.
Thorne was looking at the trees, and saw a single dinosaur hop out into view. It was rather slender, agile on its hind legs, balancing with a stiff tail. It was six feet tall, green-brown with dark-red stripes, like a tiger.
“That,” Malcolm said, “is a velociraptor.”
Thorne turned to Levine. “That’s what chased you up in the tree? It looks ugly.”
“Efficient,” Levine said. “Those animals are brilliantly constructed killing machines. Arguably the most efficient predators in the history of the planet. The one that just stepped out will be the alpha animal. It leads the pack.”
Thorne saw other movement beneath the trees. “There’s more.”
“Oh yes,” Levine said. “This particular pack is very large.” He picked up binoculars, and peered through them. “I’d like to locate their nest,” he said. “I haven’t been able to find it anywhere on the island. Of course they’re secretive, but even so . . .”
The parasaurs were all crying loudly, moving closer to the apatosaur herd as they did so. But the big apatosaurs seemed relatively indifferent; the adults nearest the water actually turned their backs to the approaching raptor.
“Don’t they care?” Arby said. “They’re not even looking at him.”
“Don’t be fooled,” Levine said, “the apatosaurs care very much. They may look like gigantic cows, but they’re nothing of the sort. Those whiptails are thirty or forty feet long, and weigh several tons. Notice how fast they can swing them. One smack from those tails would snap an attacker’s back.”
“So turning away is part of their defense?”
“Unquestionably, yes. And you can see now how the long necks balance their tails.”
The tails of the adults were so long, they reached entirely across the river, to the other shore. As they swung back and forth, and the parasaurs cried out, the lead raptor turned away. Moments later, the entire pack began to slink off, following the edge of the trees, heading up into the hills.
“Looks like you’re right,” Thorne said. “The tails scared them off.”
“How many do you count?” Levine said.
“I don’t know. Ten to twelve. I might have missed a few.”
“Fourteen.” Malcolm scribbled in his notebook.
“You want to follow them?” Levine said.
“Not now.”
“We could take the Explorer.”
“Maybe later,” Malcolm said.
“I think we need to know where their nest is,” Levine said. “It’s essential, Ian, if we’re going to settle predator-prey relationships. Nothing is more important than that. And this is a perfect opportunity to follow—”
“Maybe later,” Malcolm said. He checked his watch again.
“That’s the hundredth time you’ve checked your watch today,” Thorne said.
Malcolm shrugged. “Getting to be lunchtime,” he said. “By the way, what about Sarah? Shouldn’t she be arriving soon?”
“Yes. I imagine she’ll show up any time now,” Thorne said.
Malcolm wiped his forehead. “It’s hot up here.”
“Yes, it’s hot.”
They listened to the buzzing of insects in the midday sun, and watched the raptors retreat.
“You know, I’m thinking,” Malcolm said. “Maybe we ought to go back.”