The Lost World (13 page)

T
horne was uneasy. He was beginning to understand how Eddie felt. He had built these vehicles, and he had an uncomfortable sense of isolation, of being in this faraway place with untested equipment. The road continued steeply upward through dark jungle for the next fifteen minutes. Inside the trailer, it grew uncomfortably warm. Sitting beside him, Malcolm said, "Air conditioning?"

"I don't want to drain the battery." "Mind if I open the window?"

"If you think it's all right," Thorne said.

Malcolm shrugged. "Why not?" He pushed the button, and the power window rolled down. Warm air blew into the car. He glanced back at Thorne. "Nervous, Doc?"

"Sure," Thorne said. "Damned right I am." Even with the window open, he felt sweat running down his chest as he drove.

Over the radio, Eddie was saying, "I'm telling you, we should have tested first, Doc. Should have done it by the book. You don't come to a place with poisonous chickens if you're not sure your vehicles will hold up."

"The cars are fine," Thorne said. "How's your levels?"

"High normal, Eddie said. "Just great. Of course, we've only gone five miles. It's nine in the morning, Doc."

The road swung right, then left, following a series of switchbacks as the terrain became steeper. Hauling the big trailers, Thorne had to concentrate on his driving; it was a relief to focus his attention.

Ahead of them, the Explorer turned left, going higher up the road. "I don't see any more animals," Eddie said. He sounded relieved.

Finally the road flattened out as it turned, following the crest of the ridge. According to the GPS display, they were now heading north west, toward the interior of the island. But the jungle still hemmed them in on all sides; they could not see much beyond the dense walls of foliage.

They came to a Y intersection in the road, and Eddie pulled over to the side. Thorne saw that in the crook of the Y was a faded wooden sign, with arrows pointing in both directions. To the left, the sign said "To Swamp." To the right was another arrow, and the words, "To Site B."

Eddie said, "Guys? Which way?"

"Go to Site B," Malcolm said.

"You got it," The Explorer started down the right fork, Thorne followed. Off to the right, sulfurous yellow steam issued from the ground, bleaching the nearby foliage white. The smell was strong.

"Volcanic," Thorne said to Malcolm, "just as you predicted." Driving past, they glimpsed a bubbling pool in the earth, crusted thick yellow around the edges.

"Yeah," Eddie said, "but that's active. In fact, I'd say that - holy shit!" Eddie's brake lights flashed on, and his car slammed to a stop.

Thorne had to swerve, scraping jungle ferns on the side of the trailer, to miss him. He pulled up alongside the Explorer, and glared at Eddie. "Eddie, for Pete's sake, will you - "

But Eddie wasn't listening.

He was staring straight forward, his mouth wide open.

Thorne turned to look.

Directly ahead, the trees along the road had been beaten down, creating a gap in the foliage. They could see all the way from the ridge road across the entire island to the west. But Thorne hardly registered the panoramic view. Because all he saw was a large animal, the size of a hippopotamus, ambling across the road. Except it wasn't a hippopotamus. This animal was pale brown, its skin covered with large plate-like scales. Around its head, it had a curving bony crest, and rising from this crest were two blunted horns. A third horn protruded above its snout.

Over the radio, he heard Eddie breathing in shallow gasps. "You know what that is?"

"That's a triceratops," Malcolm said. "A young one, by the looks of it."

"Must be," Eddie said. Ahead of them, a much larger animal now crossed the road. It was easily twice the size of the first, and its horns were long, curving, and sharp. "Because that's his mom."

A third triceratops appeared, then a fourth. There was a whole herd of creatures, ambling slowly across the road. They paid no attention to the vehicles as they crossed, passed through the gap, and descended down the hill, disappearing from view.

Only then were the men able to see through the gap itself. Thorne had a view across a vast marshy plain, with a broad river coursing through the center. On either side of the river, animals grazed. There was a herd of perhaps twenty medium-sized, dark-green dinosaurs to the south, their large heads intermittently poking up above the grass along the river. Nearby, Thorne saw eight duck-billed dinosaurs with large tube-like crests rising above their heads; they drank and lifted their heads, honking mournfully. Directly ahead, he saw a]one stegosaurus, with its curved back and its vertical rows of plates. The triceratops herd moved slowly past the stegosaur, which paid no attention to them. And to the west, rising above a clump of trees, they saw a dozen long, graceful necks of apatosaurs, their bodies hidden by the foliage that they lazily ate. It was a tranquil scene -but it was a scene from another world.

"Doc?" Eddie said. "What is this place?"

S
itting in the cars, they stared out over the plain. They watched the dinosaurs move slowly through the deep grass. They beard the soft cry of the duckbills. The separate herds moved peacefully beside the river.

Eddie said, "So what are we saying, this is a place that got bypassed by evolution? One of those places where time stands still?"

"Not at all," Malcolm said, "There's a perfectly rational explanation for what you are seeing. And we are going to - "

From the dashboard, there was a high-pitched beeping. On the GPS map, a blue grid was overlaid, with a flashing triangular point marked LEVN.

"It's him!" Eddie said. "We got the son of a bitch!"

"You're reading that?" Thorne said. "It's pretty weak…"

"It's fine - it's got enough signal strength to transmit the ID tab. That's Levine, all right. Looks like it is coming from the valley over there."

He started the Explorer, and it lurched forward up the road. "Let's go," Eddie said. "I want to get the hell out of here."

With the flick of a switch, Thorne turned on the electric Motor for the trailer, and beard the chug of the vacuum pump, the low whine of the automatic transmission. He put the trailer in gear, and followed behind.

The impenetrable jungle closed in around them again, close and hot. The trees overhead blocked nearly all the sunlight. As he drove, he heard the beeping become irregular. He glanced at the monitor, saw the flashing triangle was disappearing, then coming back again.

"Are we losing him, Eddie?" Thorne said.

"Doesn't matter if we do," Eddie said. "We've got a location on him now, and we can go right there. In fact, it should be just down this road here. Right past this guardhouse or whatever it is, dead ahead."

Thorne looked past the Explorer, and saw a concrete structure and a tilting steel road-barrier. It did indeed look like a guardhouse. It was in disrepair, and overgrown with vines. They drove on, coming onto paved road. It was clear the foliage on either side had once been cut far back, fifty feet on either side. Pretty soon they came to a second guardhouse, and a second checkpoint.

They continued on another hundred yards, the road still curving slowly along the ridge. The surrounding foliage became sparser; through gaps in the ferns Thorne could see wooden outbuildings, all painted identical green. They seemed to be utility structures, perhaps sheds for equipment. He had the sense of entering a substantial complex.

And then, suddenly, they rounded a curve, and saw the entire complex spread out below them. It was about a half-mile away.

Eddie said, "What the hell is that?"

Thorne stared, astonished. In the center of the clearing he saw the flat roof of an enormous building. It covered several acres, stretching away into the distance. It was the size of two football fields. Beyond the vast roof was a large blocky building with a metal roof, which had the functional look of a power plant, But if so, it was as big as the power plant for a small town.

At the far end of the main building, Thorne saw loading docks, and turnarounds for trucks. Over to the right, partially hidden in foliage, there were a series of small structures that looked like cottages. But from a distance it was hard to be sure.

Taken together, the whole complex had a utilitarian quality that reminded Thorne of an industrial site, or a fabrication plant. He frowned, trying to put it together.

"Do you know what this is?" Thorne said to Malcolm.

"Yes," Malcolm said, nodding slowly. "It's what I suspected for some time now."

"Yes?"

"It's a manufacturing plant," Malcolm said. "It's a kind of factory."

"But it's huge," Thorne said.

"Yes," Malcolm said. "It had to be."

Over the radio, Eddie said, "I'm still getting a reading from Levine. And guess what? It seems to be coming from that building."

They drove past the covered front entrance to the main building, beneath the sagging portico. The building was of modern design, concrete and glass, but the jungle had long ago grown up around it. Vines hung from the roof Panes of glass were broken; ferns sprouted between cracks in the concrete.

Thorne said, "Eddie? Got a reading?"

Eddie said, "Yeah. Inside. What do you want to do?"

"Set up base camp in that field over there," Thorne said, pointing a half-mile to the left, where once, it seemed, there had been an extensive lawn. It was still an open clearing in the jungle; there would be sunlight for the photovoltaics. "Then we'll have a look around."

Eddie parked his Explorer, turning it around to face back the way they had come. Thorne maneuvered the trailers alongside the car, and cut the engine. He climbed out into the still, hot morning air. Malcolm got out and stood with him. Here in the center of the island, it was completely silent, except for the buzz of insects.

Eddie came over, slapping himself. "Great place, huh? No shortage of mosquitoes. You want to go get the son of a bitch now?" Eddie unclipped a receiver from his belt, and cupped his hand over the display, trying to see it in the sunlight. "Still right over there." He pointed to the main building. "What do you say?"

"Let's go get him," Thorne said.

The three men turned, climbed into the Explorer, and, leaving the trailers behind, drove in hot sunlight toward the giant, ruined building.

I
nside the trailer, the sound of the car engine faded away, and there-was silence. The dashboard glowed, the GPS map remained visible on the monitor; the flashing X marking their position. A small window in the monitor, titled "Active Systems," indicated the battery charge, photovoltaic efficiency, and usage over the past twelve hours. The electronic readouts all glowed bright green.

In the living section, where the kitchen and beds were located, the recirculating water supply in the sink gurgled softly. Then there was a thumping sound, coming from the upper storage compartment, located near the ceiling. The thumping was repeated, and then there was silence.

After a moment, a credit card appeared through the crack of the compartment door. The card slid upward, lifting the panel latch, unhooking it. The door swung open, and a white bundle of padding fell Out, landing with a dull thud on the floor. The padding unrolled, and Arby Benton groaned, stretching his small body.

"If I don't pee, I'm going to scream," he said, and he hurried on shaky legs into the tiny bathroom.

He sighed in relief. It had been Kelly's idea for them to go, but she left it to Arby to figure out the details. And he had figured everything out perfectly, he thought - at least, almost everything. Arby had correctly anticipated it would be freezing cold in the cargo plane, and that they would have to bundle up; he'd stuffed their compartments with every blanket and sheet in the trailer. He'd anticipated they would be there at least twelve hours, and he put aside some cookies and bottles of water. In fact, he'd anticipated everything except the fact that, at the last minute, Eddie Carr would go through the trailer and latch all the storage compartments from the outside. Locking them in, so that, for the next twelve hours, he wouldn't be able to go to the bathroom. For twelve hours!

He sighed again, his body relaxing. A steady stream of urine still flowed into the basin. No wonder! Agony! And he'd still be locked in there, he thought, if he hadn't finally figured out -

Behind him, he heard muffled shouts. He flushed the toilet and went back, crouching down by the storage compartment beneath the bed. He quickly unlatched it; another padded bundle unrolled, and Kelly appeared beside him.

"Hey, Kel," he said proudly. "We made it!"

"I have to go," she said, dashing. She pulled the door shut behind her.

Arby said, "We did it! We're here!"

"Just a minute, Arb. Okay?"

For the first time, he looked out the window of the trailer. All around them was a grassy clearing, and beyond that, the ferns and high trees of the jungle. And high above the tops of the trees, he saw the curving black rock of the volcanic rim.

So this was Isla Sorna, all right.

All right!

Kelly came out of the bathroom. "Ohhh. I thought I was going to die!" She looked at him, gave him high five. "By the way, how'd you get your door unlatched?"

"Credit card," he said.

She frowned. "You have a credit card?"

"My parents gave it to me, for emergencies," he said. "And I figured this was an emergency." He tried to make a joke out of it, to treat it lightly. Arby knew Kelly was sensitive about anything to do with money. She was always making comments about his clothes and things like that. Arid how he always had money for a taxi or a Coke at Larson's Deli after school, or whatever. Once he said to her that he didn't think money was so important, and she said, "Why would you?" in a funny voice. Arid ever since then he had tried to avoid the subject.

Arby wasn't always clear about the right thing to do around people. Everyone treated him so weird, anyway. Because he was younger, of course. And because he was black. Arid because he was what the other kids called a brainer. He found himself engaged in a constant effort to be accepted, to blend in. Except he couldn't. He wasn't white, he wasn't big, he wasn't good at sports, and he wasn't dumb. Most of his classes at school were so boring Arby could hardly stay awake in them. His teachers sometimes got annoyed with him, but what could he do? School was like a video played at super-slow speed. You could glance at it once an hour and not miss anything. And when he was around the other kids, how could he be expected to show interest in TV shows like "Melrose Place," or the San Francisco 49ers, or the Shaq's new commercial. He couldn't. That stuff wasn't important.

But Arby had long ago discovered it was unpopular to say so. It was better to keep your mouth shut. Because nobody understood him, except Kelly. She seemed to know what he was talking about, most of the time.

And Dr. Levine. At least the school had an advanced-placement track, which was moderately interesting to Arby. Not very interesting, of course, but better than the other classes. And when Dr. Levine had decided to teach the class, Arby had found himself excited by school for the first time in his life. In fact -

"So this is Isla Sorna, huh?" Kelly said, looking out the window at the jungle.

"Yeah," Arby said. "I guess so."

"You know, when they stopped the car earlier," Kelly said, "could you hear what they were talking about?"

"Not really. All the padding."

"Me neither," Kelly said. "But they seemed pretty worked up about something."

"Yeah, they did."

"It sounded like they were talking about dinosaurs, Kelly said. "Did you hear anything like that?"

Arby laughed, shaking his head. "No, Kel," he said.

"Because I thought they did."

"Come on, Kel."

"I thought Thorne said 'triceratops."'

"Kel," he said. "Dinosaurs have been extinct for sixty-five million years.

"I know that…"

He pointed out the window. "You see any dinosaurs out there?"

Kelly didn't answer. She went to the other side of the trailer, and looked out the opposite window. She saw Thorne, Malcolm, and Eddie disappearing into the main building.

"They're going to be pretty annoyed when they find us," Arby said. "How do you think we should tell them?"

"We can let it be a surprise.

"They'll be mad," he said.

"So? What can they do about it?" Kelly said.

"Maybe they'll send us back."

"How? They can't."

"Yeah. I guess." Arby shrugged casually, but he was more troubled by this line of thought than he wanted to admit. This was all Kelly's idea. Arby had never liked to break the rules, or to get into any kind of trouble. Whenever he had even had a mild reprimand from a teacher, he would get flushed and sweaty. And for the last twelve hours, he had been thinking about how Thorne and the others would react.

"Look," Kelly said. "The thing is, we're here to help find our friend Dr. Levine, that's all. We've helped Dr. Thorne already."

"Yes

"And we'll be able to help them again."

"Maybe…"

"They need our help."

"Maybe," Arby said. He didn't feel convinced.

Kelly said, "I wonder what they have to eat here." She opened the refrigerator. "You hungry?"

"Starving," Arby said, suddenly aware that he was.

'So what do you want?"

"What is there?" He sat on the padded gray couch and stretched, as he watched Kelly poke through the refrigerator.

"Come and look," she said, annoyed. "I'm not your stupid housekeeper,"

"Okay, okay, take it easy."

"Well, you expect everybody to wait on you," she said.

"I do not," he said, getting quickly off the couch.

"You're such a brat, Arby."

"Hey," he said. "What's the big deal? Take it easy. You nervous about something?"

No, I am not," she said. She took a wrapped sandwich out of the refrigerator. Standing beside her, he looked briefly inside, grabbed the first sandwich he saw.

"You don't want that," she said.

"Yes, I do."

"It's tuna salad."

Arby hated tuna salad. He put it back quickly, looked around again.

"That's turkey on the left," she said. "In the bun."

He brought out a turkey sandwich. "Thanks."

"No problem." Sitting on the couch, she opened her own sandwich, wolfed it down hungrily.

"Listen, at least I got us here," he said, unwrapping his own carefully. He folded the plastic neatly, set it aside.

"Yeah. You did. I admit it. You did that part all right."

Arby ate his sandwich. He thought he had never tasted anything so good in his entire life. It was better even than his mother's turkey sandwiches.

The thought of his mother gave him a pang. His mother was a gynecologist and very beautiful. She had a busy life, and wasn't home very much, but whenever he saw her, she always seemed so peaceful. And Arby felt peaceful around her, too. They had a special relationship, the two of them. Even though lately she sometimes seemed uneasy about how much he knew. One night he had come into her study; she was going over some journal articles about progesterone levels and FSH. He looked over her shoulder at the columns of numbers and suggested that she might want to try a nonlinear equation to analyze the data. She gave him a funny look, a kind of separate look, thoughtful and distant from him, and at that moment he had felt -

"I'm getting another one," Kelly said, going back to the refrigerator. She came out with two sandwiches, one in each hand.

"You think there's enough?"

"Who cares? I'm starving," she said, tearing off the wrapping on the first.

"Maybe we shouldn't eat - "

"Arb, if you're going to worry like this, we should have stayed home."

He decided that was right. He was surprised to see that he had somehow finished his own sandwich. So he took the other one Kelly offered him.

Kelly ate, and stared out the window. "I wonder what that building is, that they went into? It looks abandoned."

"Yeah. For years."

"Why would somebody build a big building here, on some deserted island in Costa Rica?" she said.

"Maybe they were doing something secret."

"Or dangerous," she said.

"Yeah. Or that." The idea of danger was both titillating and unnerving. He felt far from home.

"I wonder what they were doing?" she said. Still eating, she got up off the couch and went to look out the window. "Sure is a big place. Huh," she said. "That's weird."

"What is?"

"Look out here. That building is all overgrown, like nobody's been there for years and years. And this field is all grown up, too. The grass is pretty high."

"Yes…"

"But right down here," she said, pointing near the trailer, "there's a clear path."

Chewing, Arby came over and looked. She was right. Just a few yards from their trailer, the grass had been trampled down, and was yellowed. In many places, bare earth showed through. It was a narrow but distinct trail, coming in from the left, going off to the right, across the open clearing.

"So," Kelly said. "If nobody's been here for years, what made the trail?"

"Has to be animals," he said. It was all he could think of "Must be a game trail."

" Like what animals?"

"I don't know. Whatever's here. Deer or something."

'I haven't seen any deer."

He shrugged. "Maybe goats. You know, wild goats, like they have in Hawaii."

"The trail's too wide for deer or goats."

"Maybe there's a whole herd of wild goats."

"Too wide," Kelly said. She shrugged, and turned away from the window. She went back to the refrigerator. "I wonder if there's anything for dessert."

Mention of dessert gave him a sudden thought. He went to the com partment above the bed, climbed up, and poked around.

"What're you doing?" she said.

"Checking my pack."

"For what?"

"I think I forgot my toothbrush.

"So?"

"I won't be able to brush my teeth."

"Arb," she said. "Who cares?"

"But I always brush my teeth…"

"Be daring," Kelly said. "Live a little."

Arby sighed. "Maybe Dr. Thorne brought an extra one." He came back and sat down on the couch beside Kelly. She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head.

"No dessert?"

"Nothing. Not even frozen yogurt. Adults. They never plan right."

"Yeah. That's true."

Arby yawned, It was warm in the trailer. He felt sleepy. Lying huddled in that compartment for the last twelve hours, shivering and cramped, he hadn't slept at all. Now he was suddenly tired.

He looked at Kelly, and she yawned, too. "Want to go outside? Wake us up?"

"We should probably wait here," he said.

"If I do, I'm afraid I'll go to sleep," Kelly said.

Arby shrugged. Sleep was overtaking him fast. He went back to the living compartment, and crawled onto the mattress beside the window. Kelly followed him back.

"I'm not going to sleep," she said.

"Fine, Kel." His eyes were heavy. He realized he couldn't keep them open.

"But" - she yawned again - "maybe I'll just lie down for a minute."

He saw her stretch out on the bed opposite him, and then his eyes closed, and he was immediately asleep. He dreamed he was back in the airplane, feeling the gentle rocking motion, hearing the deep rumble of the engines. He slept lightly, and at one moment woke up, convinced that the trailer actually was rocking, and that there really was a low rumbling sound, coming from right outside the window. But almost immediately he was asleep again, and now he dreamed of dinosaurs, Kelly's dinosaurs, and in his light sleep there were two animals, so huge that he could not see their heads through the window, only their thick scaly legs as they thumped on the ground and walked past the trailer. But in his dream the second animal paused, and bent over, and the big head peered in curiously through the window, and Arby realized that he was seeing the giant head of a Tyrannosaurus rex, the great jaws working, the white teeth glinting in the sunlight, and in his dream he watched it all calmly, and slept on.