Anonymous Rex (19 page)

“This is my laboratory,” Dr. Vallardo says expansively, relishing the opportunity to show off his work space. I, for one, am most willing to be awed by any office sixteen thousand times the size of my own. Where does he get the bread to support this kind of an operation?

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

He leads me down a row of white-coated scientists scurrying like lab rats between their contraptions, experimenting away, taking off but a second to greet their patron, and then back to work, cracking that self-imposed whip. We approach a bespectacled young man, the duck’s-ass hairdo on his guise a humorous attempt to evoke nostalgia for the days of James Dean and early Brando. Must be a Fanjutsu model, like the Jayne Mansfield look-alike they rolled out a few years back. Retro is the hip guise look these days; I’ve been thinking about adding chest hair—Attachment 513, Connery Style #2—and gold chains to mine. It might complement my mustache, which, I might add, I haven’t gotten one negative comment on the entire day.

Introductions are made all around, and it takes two minutes to assure Dr. Gordon—the young scientist—that I am not going to leak information to the Council. Obviously, they’ve all been under a bit of stress as of late.

“Dr. Gordon is working on the protein transfer for the second receptor site,” Dr. Vallardo explains, the scientific gibberish twisting my mind like an old dishcloth. “He’s figured out a way to use the cytosine from one strand, and—”

“Whoa, whoa, Doc, wait up.” My head hurts already, and I’ve only been down here for a minute.

“Am I going too quickly?” asks the doctor.

“You could say that.” The fact that he’s going at all is too much for me to handle. “Can I get this in layman’s terms?”

“Have you not read my work before?” he says.

“Sorry to say I haven’t. I pretty much got the basics down and that’s all.”

Dr. Vallardo mulls this over, his bushy eyebrows working like squirming larvae atop his brow. “Come, come,” he says, some decision clearly made, and we take our leave of the scientist, who is more than happy to get back to work.

Vallardo leads me through the laboratory and down a set of stairs, saying, “I have been known to … how do you say it … talk over people.” He unlocks another sliding door, and it swishes open. “All these years of schooling and seclusion amongst scientists will do that, yes, yes.”

“It’s not that,” I say, though it partially is. “I was looking for an overview of your work, mainly. Broad strokes.”

“Yes, yes. Then perhaps this will be more suitable.”

The corridor we enter is paneled wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, in rows of fluorescent tubing, each pulsing with a pale purple glow. Dr. Vallardo steps into the middle of the hallway and raises his arms, pirouetting like a ballerina. Frank and Peter join in, and the sight of these two behemoths dancing
The Nutcracker
nearly breaks me down into hysteria.

“Low-level ultraviolet,” Dr. Vallardo explains, urging me to follow the leader. “Kills off surface bacteria. We tried stronger doses, but it made everyone rather ill, yes, yes.”

How reassuring. I reluctantly raise my arms and sync up with Vallardo, Frank, and Peter in their surreal dance.

After the curtain call, we emerge from the other end of the corridor disinfected and ready for action. “In a moment I will close the door behind us,” Dr. Vallardo tells me—I get the idea Frank and Peter have heard it all before—“and the lights will go out. You will be able to see nothing, but do not worry, this is normal, yes. Another door will open, and I will lead you through it. That one, too, will close, and for some time, it will be quite dark, yes? So stay absolutely still and you won’t run into anything. Light levels are low, and for a reason.”

I nod. “Ready when you are.”

With an electric pop, the lights blow out. I hear the swish of yet another sliding door, and feel a strong hand at my elbow. I am led forward a few feet, and can sense a breeze as the door slips closed behind us. We wait.

“You’re right, Doc. I can’t see a thing.” We have stepped out of the Cook Medical Center and into the Black Hole of Calcutta.

“Give it time,” Dr. Vallardo says. “You’ll see soon enough, yes, yes.”

Still nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Oh … maybe … a grapefruit glow, balancing between yellow and pink, waist level, but far away … and there’s another one, more of a homestyle orange juice radiance … and another, and another. Slowly, hundreds of small, glowing boxes shimmer into existence, eventually making enough of an impression on my optic nerves for me to finally figure out exactly what I’m standing in: an incubation chamber.

“The different lights you see—the varying colors, hues, shades—are all by-products of the chemical and heating factors of each incubator.” Dr. Vallardo leads me around the room, showing off his creations. “The blue ones, for example, are for the most recently fertilized eggs. We won’t push them up to the yellow and orange lights for another three weeks. Then, of course, after we’ve ascertained that we have achieved fertilization, we can move them into a warmer environment, yes …”

As Dr. Vallardo prattles on, I find myself searching for evidence of a hoax, looking for the strings on the flying magician’s back. Despite all I have read about Dr. Vallardo and his work, my first inclination tends toward disbelief. It was all easy enough to accept while sitting in a Council meeting in a basement clear across the country—okay, there’s a doctor in New York who says he can mix the different genes of dino races and produce mixed offspring, and what are we going to do about it if it comes to Los Angeles? But back then it was a policy decision, to be based solely on what would be the best course of action to protect the public interest in such a hypothetical situation, but now, inside this chamber, I feel a more visceral reaction, the consequences slamming home deep within my own reproductive organs.

Every incubator contains an egg, no two alike, their size and shape varying from baseball to football to basketball, but each clearly a dino egg nevertheless. A complex series of clamps and rubber padding sporadically spins each egg in its bed, lifting it up, turning it over, and gently placing it down again. A small monitor attached to the top of each incubator reads off what I assume to be vital signs, though I can’t imagine that a just-fertilized specimen would have many vital signs from which to take a measurement.

The entire scene is reminiscent of a singularly ridiculous movie
that came out in the theaters a few years back and did tremendous business at the box office; the humans went to see it to confirm their worst fears about our kind, and we dinos went to see it to confirm our worst fears that we are indeed the humans’ worst fears and that we would be wiped off the face of the planet the minute we should choose to announce our presence, so it’s not surprising that the movie sucked up a lot of money all around. The basic concept of the film, as far as I can remember, involved a human scientist using fossilized DNA—ha!—to create a whole mess of dinosaurs and keep us captive on an island somewhere in the South Pacific, ostensibly to create an amusement park, only we manage to get loose and kill all the humans in sight without forethought as to why or what they would taste like.

Rubbish, the whole thing, especially the way we poor Raptors were portrayed. We can be dangerous, yes, but we do not kill indiscriminately, and I’ve never known a one of us to kill a human for no good reason. Then again, dragging us up from the depths of a test tube and locking us in cages like wild beasts might be good reason at that.

I realize it’s all just fun and games, celluloid fantasies for a mindless human population who could never in their wildest dreams imagine seeing a real live dinosaur, let alone believe that one could run a criminal investigation, process film, serve drinks at the Dine-O-Mat, or head up the world’s leading generic drug corporation, but it doesn’t make the whole matter any less offensive.

But there I go again, getting worked up, when my whole point is that the one thing—the only thing—the film got right was the incredible financial burden one would have to work under in order to run about splicing DNA, messing with the whole genetic code, all to bring even a single dinosaur egg through incubation. Since the guy in the movie had business contacts up the wazoo, and as the setup Dr. Vallardo has down here is a heck of a lot more incredible in its scope and depth, I find myself wondering once again where he finds the money for his research. This time, I ask him.

“Private donors, mostly,” he says. “I cannot use hospital funds, of course, as many of the trustees are human, yes, but I have been able to secure the work space from a few friends of mine on the board.”

“Private donors such as …?”

Dr. Vallardo shakes his finger at me. “Then they would not be so private, yes?”

“May I conjecture?”

“Another hunch?”

“Educated guess.”

He shrugs, turns to inspect an egg. “I cannot stop you from guessing, can I?”

Nope. “Was Donovan Burke a contributor?”

“Who?”

“Donovan—Burke.” I am sure to enunciate.

He shrugs. “The name does not sound familiar. I have many contributors, most in small donations, too many to remember by name.”

“He was also a patient of yours about two years ago,” I say. “A male Raptor.”

Dr. Vallardo makes a good show of trying to recall a name from his past, eyes glancing up, fingers scratching chin, but I don’t buy it for a second. “No,” he says, shaking his head, “I do not recall a patient by that name.”

“His fiancée was a Coleophysis, name of Jaycee Holden.”

Again, the head shake, and again, I don’t believe him. “They came in for treatments, you say?”

“I didn’t say, but yes, they did.”

“Yes, yes … I have no recollection. There are so many.”

“Probably not big contributors, then.”

“Probably not.”

“What about Dr. Nadel?”

“Kevin Nadel?”

Ring out the bells—the doctor’s admitting to something. “Yes, the county coroner. Was he a contributor?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“But you know him.”

“We went to medical school together, yes? An old friend. But he works for the government—there is little money to be made.”

“So maybe you gave him some cash.”

“I do not loan money to friends.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a loan.”

“Are you trying to make a point?” he asks, and I decide to let the
matter slide before he gets the two Brontos to shove me into a glass box and toss me from the building.

“Let’s move on,” I say. Time for the big show, everybody take your places. “Was Raymond McBride a contributor?”

Fortunately, Dr. Vallardo had removed his hands from the bowling-ball—sized egg he had been handling, or that particular experiment might have ended with a crush of shell and a splatter of yolk. He calls over to his bodyguards, busy inspecting the smaller eggs—“Frank, Peter, could you wait outside?”

The twin Brontosaurs oblige, slipping out through the double-lock doors. Dr. Vallardo waits until they leave, and then turns back, his face straining to hold its good cheer. “You have spoken with him?” he asks, and from across the room I can hear his teeth grinding. “Before he passed on, that is?”

I expected a reaction, but not one this juicy. I’ll have to squeeze it, work out the pulp. “I’ve spoken with his wife,” I say, mustering all the insinuation I can. “We had a long talk. She told me a lot.”

He’s not falling for it.

“Mr. McBride, rest his soul, was a contributor, yes. A rather public one, in fact. He supported my work fully, yes, yes.”

“Fully.… So are we talking thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?”

“I’m afraid I can’t release that.”

“Even if I ask real nice?”

“Even if you beg.”

Face-off. Don’t flinch. Contest of the wills. This is the way I prefer my battles. Staring contest—first one to blink loses.

Darn. Not fair—I have congenital eye dryness. Okay, so at least I’ve confirmed that McBride was a contributor, even if I don’t have the exact amounts.

“Why would Raymond McBride fund the efforts of a scientist whose work holds nothing for him?” I ask. “Both he and Mrs. McBride are Carnotaurs. They had no need of your treatments.”

“How can I comment on a dead man’s thoughts?” he says. “Perhaps he wanted to help dinosaur society as a whole, yes, yes.”

“Do you think Raymond McBride was murdered by someone who didn’t approve of his funding your projects?”

“I have no idea why Mr. McBride was murdered. If I did, I would have gone to the police, yes.”

“But is it
possible
,” I say, too many recent nights of late night television due to daytime unemployment forcing this Court TV blather out of my mouth, “that Mr. McBride was murdered because of his involvement with your work?”

A deep sigh—I find that I am getting more and more of these from witnesses recently—and he says, “Anything is possible, Mr. Rubio. Anything.” This whole time, Vallardo’s smile hasn’t slipped. It’s a costume grin that’s getting to me, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that it’s a new guise attachment from the Nanjutsu Corporation—Attachment 418, Perpetual Cheer. There’s a wall somewhere in this doctor’s brain, strong and thick, and it’s going to be a bitch to sledgehammer that baby down. But maybe, just maybe, I can go around it.

I move across the room, forcing my steps into a carefree saunter, casually inspecting the incubators as I go.
No problems here
, this walk is supposed to announce,
everyone relax
. As I delve deeper into the chamber, I find a section of eggs clearly more developed than the rest. They are the senior class of Dr. Vallardo’s incubation room, the ones who drive the cool cars and get all the chicks, light pods in their boxes suffusing them with a deep red glow, bordering on brown. Crayola would call it Burnt Umber and be done with it.

“What’s this one?” I ask, pointing to an oblong shell. “It’s bigger than the others.”

With a beam of fatherly pride, Dr. Vallardo snaps on a set of rubber gloves and gently strokes the egg’s delicate casing. “This is Philip,” he says, his voice a soft coo. “Philip has come farther along than any of our others.”